In times where jobs are so hard to come by, people are forced to do some crazy things to get hired. As glamorous as actors and actresses lives look, they too need to work to get jobs. But is it really worth putting their health at risk to land a role in a movie?

Anne Hathaway had to lose 25 pounds before starring in “Les Miserables” as Fantine. That was after the weight she had to lose before she played Catwomen in “The Dark Knight Rises.” Before that role, she went on a vegan diet and trained in martial arts and weightlifting for ten months. Going vegan was a healthy way to keep the weight off, but for “Les Miz,” Hathaway was on a diet of two thin squares of dried oatmeal paste a day. She called this the “near-starvation diet” because the look she was going for was “near death.” When filming ended, she described herself as being in a state of deprivation- both physically and emotionally. “I couldn’t react to the chaos of the world without being overwhelmed,” said Hathaway in an interview with Vogue. She is very thankful for her husband, Adam Shulman, who understood what she had to do, helped and supported her through it, and got her back to feeling like herself again.

Matthew McConaughey has also been losing weight for his new movie, “The Dallas Buyer’s Club,” which will be released in 2013. He needs to lose 30-40 pounds, about one fourth of his body weight, in order to play HIV patient Ron Woodroof. “I’m playing a guy who was sick and would have loved to have been healthier but wasn’t. For me, it’s more of a mental thing than a physical thing. I’ll get down to the weight I need to get to. I’m on my way, and it’s what I need to do for the job,” McConaughey told US Weekly. He also said that he has significantly less energy than he used to, and knows he will have a hard time gaining the weight back. “The stomach has shrunk as well. As much as I can’t wait to have that cheeseburger on the day, it’ll probably be hard to eat the whole thing.”

This crazy dieting is not only affecting themselves, but also their families. McConaughey has three young kids, one of them being a newborn. It takes a lot of strenght to raise a family and take care of a baby, but now, he is too weak from all the weight he lost. And what kind of message is he sending to his children that it is okay to risk your health in order to get a job?