At the beginning of 1999, I was flown out to Phuket, Thailand to shape-up Leonardo DiCaprio, Virginie Ledoyen, Tilda Swinton, Guillaume Canet, Paterson Joseph, Victoria Smurfit and the other cast members of the film "The Beach" adapted from the novel by Alex Garland.
Specialist training skills were employed to get them all in shape, as I had very limited time before filming commenced.
The "look" required from the cast members by this time was a lean, well toned appearance - as if they had all been living off the resources of a deserted island.
My main focus was training Leonardo DiCaprio to help achieve his shape, as many of the shots in the film feature him without his shirt.
I trained him up for 16 days. Although it was a very unorthodox approach, we trained on a twice daily basis for two hours each session. The workouts were divided into warming up, aerobic exercise for 45-60 minutes followed by an hours of resistance training.
The results speak for themselves in the film.
