Actors are advised never to work with children or animals and for: Idris Elba’s new movie Beast, that might have been worth holding on to.
Beast is a survival epic that follows a recently widowed husband (Idris) as he returns to the game reserve in South Africa, where he met his late wife, with his two children.
But the long-planned journey takes a turn when a human-hunting lion begins to attack and devour everyone in its path, pushing the family’s resilience to its limits.
And it seemed like life imitated art when director Baltasar Kormakur took a leap of faith and decided to bring a lion to the set.
At one point, the big cat managed to escape and roam free, though no one was hurt.
Baltasar told Total Film: ‘I’m not sure I’m allowed to say this, but’ [the lion] got out at one point, and there was a bit of panic on set!’
The lion came about because Baltasar asked fellow director Alejandro González Iñárritu, who was behind The Revenant, how to realistically capture the creature on CGI.
Though a little unorthodox, Alejandro’s response was to find a real lion and note how the light hit his fur while he was on set.
Baltasar explained, “So I went to the studio and said, ‘Can I have a lion on set?’ The answer was, improbably, ‘yes.’
Idris, 49, revamped his diet to get in shape for Beast, with his personal chef revealing how the actor got fit to fight for the role.
In conversation with Metro.co.ukKing The Chef revealed that he had flown to South Africa to feed the actor while filming intense 12-hour days.
He said: ‘That filming period lasted three months, so we adjusted his diet a few times.
‘Before that I had him on a pescatarian diet, we introduced a lot of protein over carbohydrates’ [food] simply because he wanted to stay slim – not too slim – just enough to look good.
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