When you get the call to sculpt the body of Hollywood actors such as Hugh Jackman into a superhero, where do you begin?

It all starts with a meeting with the director/ producer or even the actor themselves, if they have a say in the character. They’ll say “we want them to look like X in two months” and they’ll show me a picture of a guy with huge shoulders, massive beefy biceps and a tiny waist like a classic comic book drawing, or they’ll tell me that the actor needs to lose so many pounds.

What you can achieve with someone in a short space of time depends a lot on what they have done before. Their ‘training age’ is how many years they have been training. This paired with their training style gives me a good idea of how they will respond to exercises. On some projects, I’m given specific measurements by the studio that we have to achieve. It is pretty high pressure. It’s not always so rigid, though. With some actors, like Hugh Jackman for example, we simply try to take it up another notch each time in terms of muscle and definition.