How Nicholas Galitzine Got Ripped To Play He-Man In Masters Of The Universe

Might and muscle are two key factors when it comes to playing He-Man. Nicholas Galitzine followed the path of the previous Prince Adam — Dolph Lundgren, who played the part in 1987 — in bulking himself up to become a real-life version of everyone's favorite plastic fantastic sword-wielding warrior. Though he plays both Earth-bound desk jockey Adam Glenn and his magic-enhanced alter ego in the "Masters of the Universe" movie, Galitzine — unlike Lundgren back in the 1980s — didn't come to the part with a bodybuilder's musculature.

While in good athletic shape thanks to playing rugby in his youth, how did Galitzine manage to add on a whole lot of muscles and turn himself into the steely Eternian? With a bunch of exercise and a ton of eating. The role was demanding for the young actor, who had to keep himself in peak condition for months — and then had to quickly slough off the muscle mass for his next role. Here's the skinny on how Nicholas Galitzine got so beefy for "Masters of the Universe."

The first key to Nicholas Galitzine's increased muscle mass was simple: he ate a lot to increase his bulk. "There's been a lot of eating and weightlifting, a lot of stunts," he told W magazine during the movie's shoot. "I'm eating about 4,000 calories a day, but the amount of physical work I'm doing, you end up hungry at the end of the day, which is quite surprising."

Galitzine didn't reveal what sort of food he consumed during his Prince Adam prep time, but he did say that he knew that someday he'd have to lose all the muscle he'd packed on for the part — and that he wouldn't be in a pleasant frame of mind while it was happening. "I will eventually go into what's called the cutting phase, where I'm going to be starved and so rude to everyone. I can only apologize for the person I'm going to become in a few months' time," he admitted. 

It turns out that time period arrived much earlier than the actor anticipated. "We started shooting and then I had to cut while we were shooting, which is pretty insane," he said to E! News. "You have that brain fog. So, I definitely felt like that was a thing but especially when you're doing these action set pieces, you've gotta have energy for it."

The next thing Nicholas Galitzine did to sculpt his body into a form worthy of He-Man through exercise. He told E! News that he lifted weights for three hours and performed other sorts of physical activities on a daily basis, such as fight choreography and boxing.

"It was an every day a week thing. It was a pretty short amount of time," he explained. "You kind of would love to live in this character for a year beforehand but the training very much changed as the movie went on. We started out really trying to pack on as much size as possible."

While Galitzine didn't spell out his full physical fitness routine — which may have also included calisthenics in addition to his other training — he has revealed that it was pretty difficult and "something I had to really work through on a day-to-day basis. I really enjoyed the challenge."

Something that contributed to the difficulty of Nicholas Galitzine's physical fitness routine was the fact that the workouts didn't stop even when he had a moment of downtime. Due to the compressed amount of time he had to prepare for the role, he was sometimes required to work out between takes while on the set of "Masters of the Universe."

"You're shooting a scene, they say, 'You have 10 minutes until the next set up,' you run outside, you hop on the assault bike, run back in, shoot a scene again, and that kind of goes on for about five months," Galitzine told E! News. 

As noted above, the producers asked Galitzine to cut down on his calories mid-shoot, which definitely left him stuck trying to compensate for an energy deficit while still performing in strenuous action sequences. Since he's only the second live-action He-Man in film history — the long history of rebooting "Masters of the Universe" has been, until now, one of failure — it's clear he had to work hard to impress. Fortunately for the actor, this hectic time wouldn't last eternally — and one day he'd be able to enjoy food again.

Amazingly, Nicholas Galitzine only had three weeks to tone down his musculature for his next film, the World War II-centered Netflix production "The Mosquito Bowl." He admitted that he enjoyed getting to wind down and eat like a normal human being once "Masters" wrapped, describing his first cheat meal with joy.

"I was so mentally ready to eat something disgusting. I want to say I had a combination of sushi and pizza, and I just was like, 'Give it. Give it all to me' ... it wasn't hard to go there," he told People. Fortunately, he was also blessed on "The Mosquito Bowl" with a very supportive director in Peter Berg, who wanted him to look less like a demigod and more like your average soldier. 

"The director said, 'I've got terrifying nightmares that you're gonna show up on set on day one looking like He-Man. Can you just do nothing for the next three weeks?'" he told E!. "It was kind of music to my ears. I'd lay on a couch, I ate potato chips and I said, 'This is the kind of prep I love.'" Audiences will see if all of Galitzine's hard work paid off when "Masters of the Universe" blows you away as it hits theaters on June 5.