John Goodman opened up about life after losing 200 pounds and admitted that he is adjusting to the person he sees in the mirror.
The actor, 74, shed light on his weight loss transformation during an interview with Josh Horowitz on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast on Monday, November 2, revealing that he brushes off public commentary surrounding his appearance for the most part. “I just ignore it,” Goodman said. “Since I’m in this business, it is fair game, up to a point.”
“But yeah, I’m still trying to get used to my face,” the former Roseanne star continued, revealing his reflection still takes him by surprise sometimes. “It’s weird. I think of myself as one way, and then I look at myself, ‘Oh, wow.’”
Noting that it’s been “fun” to see how much he’s changed, Goodman again pointed out, “There’s a lot of stuff I’m getting used to.”
Goodman, who weighed almost 400 pounds before his lifestyle change, was asked whether he thought his previous weight limited his acting opportunities over the years and replied, “Oh, I’m sure it did.”
“And a lot of it, I think, might have been self-sabotage,” he speculated. “Because when I got [to New York in the late ‘70s], I was maybe 225 [pounds]. I was in good shape. I got to running every day for a while, you know, around those lovely piers that are big real estate now on the West Side. I’d go through Hell’s Kitchen and go around the piers, look at Jersey, which was always lit up for autumn, putting on a show. It was beautiful.”
Goodman emphasized that he “was working enough,” but he did struggle with some mental turmoil. “I wasn’t crazy about [working a lot] but I wonder if I sabotaged myself,” he said.
As for the secrets behind his slimdown, the actor stopped drinking in 2008, revealing at the time that it “was getting to be too much” during an interview with The Guardian.
He also had stomach surgery at an undisclosed time, which contributed to his weight loss, telling The New Yorker in an interview published October 18 that as a result, he “turned anemic and lost a layer of fat under my skin, and I’m cold all the time.”
By 2023, he lost 200 pounds and said that he would often walk his dogs and do some boxing.
In his recent interview, Goodman said being consistent with an active lifestyle ultimately kept the weight off.
“I’d lose 60 pounds in a summer, gain it all back. Seventy pounds, 80 pounds,” he recalled. “And that got tiring.”
