It’s a real hot trend nowadays for actors to suffer for their craft. You’ve got guys going hardcore into method acting, staying in character for weeks, and then there are those who balloon up in weight or drop so many pounds they look half dead. You might never expect Jonah Hill to be one of those actors that ended up in the hospital because of his commitment to a role, but that’s kinda what happened to him while filming The Wolf of Wall Street. It turns out snorting too much fake cocaine can be hazardous to your health.
“I did so much fake cocaine in Wolf of Wall Street that I got bronchitis for three weeks and had to be hospitalized,” he revealed to Bill Simmons on Any Given Wednesday. “It’s vitamin powder … if you ingest any matter, that much matter into your lungs, you will get very sick. And we were just literally doing fake coke for like seven months, every day.”
“I never had more vitamin D in my entire life,” he finished with a laugh. “I could have lifted a car over my f*ckin’ head!”
It must have been a relief for Hill when they switched to smoking crack later in the movie.
Between being hospitalized, taking a pay cut to be in the movie, and getting punched in the face on Martin Scorsese’s suggestion, you can’t say Jonah didn’t pour his fair share of artistic pain into Wolf of Wall Street. That’s the negative side to pursuing serious roles in critically important film. On the plus side, the movie didn’t revolve around him being anally raped by Satan like his work with Seth Rogen and James Franco sometimes does. So it’s got that going for it, which is nice.
