We live in the era of the superhero. There’s no escaping it. Our popular culture is obsessed with these figures: go to a cinema on any given week and you can reliably find scenes of musclebound Übermenschen saving the world. Many of these films are explicit about it; others, such as James Bond or Fast & Furious, are superhero fiction in all but name. As Hollywood has flooded the market with these stories, performers have had to bend to this new paradigm’s whims. What does this mean, exactly? Glutes. Pecs. Abs. “Body transformations.” Normal bodies no longer suffice.
In light of this, it is easy to understand why so many suspect the film industry of having a steroids problem. Over the past decade, we’ve seen countless normal men whittle themselves into sinewy adonises for the purposes of this or that blockbuster role. On his podcast this week, Joe Rogan – a man who, it must be said, has a chequered history when it comes to journalistic rigour – accused Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson of using steroids. (Johnson has admitted to dabbling with performance-enhancing drugs in his youth, but has suggested this was a thing of the past.) Rogan levelled a similar accusation at Chris Hemsworth, whose role as the Norse god Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe prompted the actor to balloon into a veritable human Hulk. (Hemsworth’s trainers have denied the suggestion that he used steroids to aid this transformation.) If some experts are to be believed – see, for instance, Vox’s 2021 piece on “the open secret to looking like a superhero” – steroid use is rife among actors.
