Mellissa McCarthy kicked off her career as a stand-up comedian. She was part of The Groundlings, a renowned improv comedy troupe in Los Angeles, and also performed gigs in New York City. Her first major TV role came in 2000 when she was cast as Sookie St. James on the popular TV show, Gilmore Girls. She remained on the show for seven years, and also scored parts in comedy series such as Curb Your Enthusiasm and Samantha Who?
From 2010 to 2016, McCarthy starred as Molly Flynn on the hit CBS sitcom Mike & Molly. But it was her breakout performance in the hilarious 2011 film Bridesmaids that made her a household name and earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. That same year, she won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for Mike & Molly.
Since then, McCarthy’s star has continued to rise. She’s starred in comedies such as The Heat, Identify Theft, The Boss, and the Ghostbusters reboot. She also took on the dramatic role of disgraced celebrity biographer Lee Israel in the 2016 movie Can You Ever Forgive Me?, which earned her a second Academy Award nomination, this time for Best Actress.
Despite all her success, McCarthy faced on-going criticism about her weight. She became well-known for being heavy set and struggled with the stigma—especially in light of the fact that her male contemporaries did not seem to receive the same scrutiny. In an interview with InStyle she said:
I do remember another interview I did for Bridesmaids. [An interviewer] kept asking, ‘Are you shocked that you actually work in this business at your tremendous size?’ He was like, ‘Oh, your tremendous size, you can actually work?’ I just remember all the blood drained out of me. I thought, ‘With my tremendous size, I could tackle you so quickly.’
“But it happens all the time, to the point where it’s fascinating because they don’t do it to men,” she continued. “Not to be a jerk or single him out, but when John Goodman was heavier, did anybody ever talk about his girth?”
The Tammy actress has also admitted that her weight often fluctuated, which led her to feel sad and frustrated about her limited options for stylish clothing. “I’ve been every size in the world, from a six to a 22,” she told The Guardian in 2016. “If I had to do [the red carpet], everything was so mother-of-the-bride. I couldn’t ever put anything on and be like, ‘I love this!’ All I could say was, ‘Well, it’s on and it’s not a garbage bag.’ I was like, ‘I feel bad. I feel bad about myself’ and it just wasn’t me.”
McCarthy got so fed up with her lack of fashion choices that she created her own plus-sized clothing line in 2015 called Melissa McCarthy Seven7. Having attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in the 1980s, it was a side project that was right up the actress’s alley. “I thought, I’m modern and young and want to wear what everybody else is wearing,” she told WSJ Magazine in 2019. “Why is this such a strange request? I just wanted to make it a little smaller and more accessible. I wanted to work on keeping prices down and for it to be for everyone.”
While McCarthy has found success with weight loss recently, the Spy star says that there’s one crash diet she’ll never attempt again. She told People that in 2003, she tried an all-liquid diet that allowed her just 500 calories a day. While it was doctor-supervised, the diet caused her to lose an astonishing 70 pounds in just four months. “I’d never do that again,” she said. “I felt starved and crazy half the time.”
So what’s the secret to Melissa McCarthy’s weight loss transformation? How did she lose a reported 50 pounds in 2015? By becoming a boring person, the comedian jokes. In 2016 she told Extra, “[There’s] no trick, nothing to tell, just a super boring life. You bring it real down, you don’t do anything fun, and you go to bed at 7:30 — that’s the trick.”
The Superintelligence star also stresses that while she’s glad to be healthy and fit, she tries her best not to obsess about her weight because it’s just not worth it. “I’ll be up, I’ll be down, probably for the rest of my life,” she told Refinery 29. “The thing is, if that is the most interesting thing about me, I need to go have a lavender farm in Minnesota and give this up. There has to be something more. There are so many more intriguing things about women than their butt or their this or their that.”