‘It’s All One Giant Charade’: Steroids and Hollywood’s Drive for Super(hero)-Perfection

It started with the social media speculation. “Natty or Not?” people asked, questioning whether Hugh Jackman could possibly have avoided taking steroids to produce the eye-popping physique on display in “Deadpool & Wolverine.”

Being “natty” — meaning, natural — seemed important to Jackman, 55, who has repeatedly denied using any chemical or hormone enhancements to create the gleaming sharp cuts in his abdomen, and the veins rippling around his muscled arms as “Wolverine.”

The Internet, as usual, was skeptical.

“Steroids. It’s steroids,” influencer Noam Blum wrote on X. “I don’t know why everyone still insists on this weird industry-wide denial. It’s fine. This isn’t a professional sports competition. Steroids aren’t illegal. They all do it with steroids.”

Blum’s reply had 26.4 million views as of Wednesday.

Wolverine is a superhero and needs to look like one. But Jackman was dramatically less ripped when he first played the character in 2000’s “X-Men.”

When asked if there’s any chance the actor could have gotten as ripped as he is at his age, without the use of performance enhancers, Jay Campbell, best-selling author of “The Testosterone Optimization Therapy Bible,” told TheWrap: “There’s zero chance. He has the chiseled appearance of an intelligent androgen user.”

Representatives for Jackman declined to comment for this story. But after TheWrap reached out for comment, on Wednesday Jackman posted a nearly four minute audio message across his social media channels in which he thanked his team for getting him in shape but did not address whether he used steroids or not.

Jackman isn’t the only actor to be accused of being a “fake natty.” Intense scrutiny surfaced around fellow Marvel actor Chris Hemsworth, who claimed he had to put on “40 pounds of muscle” in five months for that full-frontal scene in “Thor: Love and Thunder.” Kumail Nanjiani also got the “Natty or Not” treatment when his trainer Grant Roberts told TMZ that Nanjiani put on 37 pounds of muscle in a year to play Kingo in Marvel’s “The Eternals,” supposedly without help of steroids.

Nanjiani turned heads in 2019 when he first showcased a radically changed physique on Instagram, after going from the doughy nerd on “Silicon Valley” to a chiseled-jawed Marvel superhero. A spokesperson for Nanjiani denied Roberts’ 37 pound claim, saying the actor only put on five pounds of muscle.

Skeptics doubted the gains by Hemsworth and Nanjiani because experts say the human body without steroids can only “naturally” gain between 8-15 pounds of muscle in a year even with extensive diet and training. Claimed muscle gains of 20-40 pounds in a year trigger the steroid alarm, especially since Nanjani was over 40 and Hemsworth was close to 40 — an age when it gets much harder to make massive muscle gains without the help of anabolics, experts say.

Lately, some actors have come forward to openly acknowledge their use of enhancements. Frank Grillo, best known for playing “Crossbones” during Marvel’s “Infinity Saga” said he was on Testosterone Replacement Therapy, or TRT. Grillo, 54 years old, also displayed an impressive enhanced physique in 2020’s “Boss Level.”

“Reacher” headliner Alan Ritchson openly admitted to using testosterone in late 2023 because of how it helped him recover from the physical demands of the role, he said.

“Getting on testosterone was huge for me,” Ritchson said. “I had none by the time I was done with season one, due to the stress and the fatigue and what I had done to my body. For me, it’s a long game. I want to do ‘Reacher’ for 15 years… I don’t want to have to have surgery after every season, and testosterone helps.”

The real question may be why using steroids is worthy of discussion for movie stars and TV actors whose livelihood depends on looking like … a superhero. Should that be “natural”? And should that set expectations for how other men ought to look?

As steroid use becomes widespread and norms change around both the limits of aging and the requirements of public imagery, some believe that Hollywood is stuck on an old, stubborn narrative.

“Hollywood and professional athletics and various other mainstream professions have been lying about their usage of performance-enhancing drugs since the beginning,” Campbell told TheWrap. “It’s not politically correct or acceptable to use [chemical] agents the general public would consider as cheating, or unethical. It’s all one giant charade.”

A legacy of actors beefing up

Actors have been beefing up for heroic action movie roles since the 1980s, when Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger dominated the landscape in films like “Rambo: First Blood Part 2” and “Commando.” Both displayed incredible physiques in their roles and paved the way for actors to look a little more like the way they are drawn in modern day superhero comics.

Schwarzenegger first made his name as a professional bodybuilder and has openly admitted to using steroids. Stallone also openly discussed his use of testosterone to get back into shape for 2008’s “Rambo.” “Testosterone to me is so important for a sense of well-being when you get older,” he said. “Everyone over 40 years old would be wise to investigate it because it increases the quality of your life.”

Christian Bale famously bulked up for 2005’s “Batman Begins” after getting down to 110 emaciated pounds in 2004’s “The Machinist.”

Daniel Craig, then in his late 30s, turned heads in a beach scene when he beefed up to play the new James Bond in 2006’s “Casino Royale.”

Once the Marvel Cinematic Universe arrived in cinemas in 2008, it also spurred the demand for heroic physiques.

Robert Downey Jr. got in shape to play Tony Stark in 2008’s “Iron Man.” Chris Evans was literally ripped from the comics when he made his entrance into the MCU displaying an impressive physique in 2011’s “Captain America: The First Avenger.”   

Henry Cavill filled out Superman’s suit in 2013’s “Man of Steel” and wowed audiences in a scene where he was topless and running around looking for clothes.

Naming and shaming

Experts say a number of factors drive a discussion about movie stars who may feel caught between the demands of their characters, their fans, private lives, and — of course — their egos. Steroid use bears a longtime stigma tied to ideas about toxic “roid” rage, and the idea that using enhancements then lying — or, perhaps, hedging — about them is a form of cheating.

Jackman’s jaw-dropping “Deadpool & Wolverine” transformation gets its own showcase during the film’s climatic scene, when his top is torn to explosive to shreds, revealing Wolverine’s shredded physique. As Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” plays in the background, even Deadpool looks over at Wolverine’s chiseled abs and nods in approval.

“His appearance in that scene is impossible to replicate naturally,” Campbell said. “We don’t want to undervalue Jackman’s hard work in the weight room and discipline to fast or eat low calories to get into such tremendous shape and condition at the age of 55.”

“The myth and legend surrounding anabolic androgenic steroids is so pervasive in pop culture that I have colleagues of mine that literally have dedicated careers to talking about it,” said Victoria Felkar, an international scholar of women’s health who has extensively studied pharmaceutical steroid hormones.

The chatter around Jackman centers on the fact that at nearly 56 years old, he is sporting even more densely defined muscles than he did 24 years ago in the first “X-Men.”

Can that kind of shredded, veiny look be achieved naturally? Fitness experts TheWrap consulted said no.

Last year, Jackman told CNN’s Chris Wallace that he’s always used “the old fashioned way,” to beef up for the role, because he’d been warned about the dangerous side effects of steroids. “I don’t love [the character] that much,” he said at the time with a smile.

In the audio message he released on X and Instagram on Wednesday, which Jackman posted with a photo of him in a bathroom taking a selfie of his bare torso, the actor thanked trainers, cooks and the makeup artists who used “some kind of oil to make my skin glisten,” for helping him achieve his physique for his latest Marvel movie.

“Yep, I had to do those deadlifts and I had to eat those meals, but I had an incredible team that helped me,” Jackman said. “There is not a hope in hell I would have gotten there without them.”

But nowhere in the message did he address steroid-use rumors directly.

Two steroids experts told TheWrap that most actors who get that buff that fast actually are taking steroids — most likely in a cocktail of performance enhancers, including Testosterone, Growth Hormone and DHT derivatives like Anavar or Winstrol. But as with the wildly popular drug Ozempic, no one will admit to using them.

Campbell said that Jackman is likely using “fat-burning and growth-promoting agents to achieve such a hard, vascular, dry condition for that scene,” referring to that shirtless moment from the movie that sparked a heated online discussion about whether the actor is “natty” or not.

“The truth is that pretty much every champion is built on chemistry,” Anthony Hughes, an attorney-turned-bodybuilder and the subject of the “Enhanced” documentary, which centers on his use of performance enhancing experiments, told TheWrap.

There are various ways to get as jacked as Jackman, including Testosterone and peptides, all of which are safer than Ozempic, LA-based personal trainer Kollins Ezekh told TheWrap.

Another expert told TheWrap that the supposed dreaded side effects of anabolic steroids and other performance enhancers have been greatly exaggerated, which unnecessarily demonizes them.

“It’s such a massive, massive myth-making machine that has directly impacted the control of testosterone and testosterone derivatives as controlled substances in the U.S.,” Felkar added.

Felkar thinks that the shame and denial about testosterone use in Hollywood likely comes from the sports world, where supplements or enhancements of any kind are prohibited and revelations about doping can end professional athletes’ careers.

“But is it really cheating?” asked Felker, citing other widely-used drugs that don’t carry as much stigma, such as Adderall or Modafinil that can help users focus or stay awake.

Hughes listed several reasons why stars don’t share the truth about their hard-earned physiques: They will lose their sponsors. They won’t be hired. “If an actor gets charged with a crime or makes a statement that’s not politically correct, you see how fast their life gets destroyed,” he said. “If they come out and admit they took steroids, it’s game over, career game. It’s a $50 million mistake if they admit they take steroids.”

The social stigma around testosterone can be so great, in fact, that even men who aren’t playing superheroes but are just taking it on the advice of their doctors don’t talk about it openly. Publicist Brian S. Gross, who’s been in the business for 30 years, is one of the few men who didn’t mind going on the record.

“I turn 49 next week, and I just recently started testosterone therapy,” he told TheWrap, saying he’d been experiencing fatigue and other side effects of low testosterone. It wasn’t until he started telling his male friends about his experience that several of them admitted, “Oh yeah, I’ve been doing it for years.”

Felkar added, “Many of [these forms of testosterone] are pharmaceutical substances that are used in clinical medicine. So how can a drug be so evil in one setting and not evil in another setting? That just doesn’t make sense.”

In February, Oprah Winfrey parted ways with Weight Watchers after she revealed she has taken a weight loss drug, although she didn’t specify which one. Ezekh feels the same about performance-enhancing drugs and said that more stars should emulate Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has always been open about using steroids when he was a bodybuilder.

“Being vulnerable and honest with your fans is very, very important,” Ezekh said. “People [who try to do the same kind of workouts] are sad and depressed that they’re not getting the same results, and they’re not looking like their favorite actors.”

Frank Grillo

Chris Hemsworth in 2022’s “Thor: Love and Thunder”

Hugh Jackman in 2014’s “X-Men: Days of Future Past”

Zac Efron in 2017’s “Baywatch”

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