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Home · News

Octavia Spencer: 'I Am Not Healthy at This Weight'

"I am not healthy at this weight," says the "Help" star. 
Octavia Spencer: ‘I Am Not Healthy at This Weight’
By Derrick Bryson Taylor · Updated October 28, 2020
Fresh off her SAG award win for best supporting actress, Octavia Spencer says her weight is a problem.

PHOTOS: Live from the 2012 Screen Actors Guild Awards

“I am not healthy at this weight,” the ESSENCE Black Women in Hollywood Honoree told People backstage at the SAG Awards. “Any time you have too much around the middle, then there is a problem. [And] when you reach a certain weight, you are less valuable.”

The Golden Globe winner adds she isn’t happy with Tinseltown’s focus on weight. “I feel for the overly thin women as I do for the overweight women. It has to change,” she said. But that’s to say she’s changing her eating habits anytime soon. “If more women ate, they would be a lot happier,” she joked. “Let me tell you, I am a lot grumpier when I don’t eat.”

PHOTOS: Live from the 2012 Golden Globes

We know this story all too well. Academy Award winner Jennifer Hudson was recently quoted expressing a similar sentiment. “In this slim world I do now realize I was being discriminated against. I’m offered more parts. There is much more excitement about me now,” she told the UK’s Grazia magazine.

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