Blake Lively admits her incredible post-baby figure ‘is not normal after 8mths’
Star believes there is too much pressure to lose weight after having a baby
DRESSED in a bikini, stunning Blake Lively does not look like she gave birth just eight months before.
And the down-to-earth actress admits the sizzling shape she had to achieve to star in her latest movie is “not normal” for a new mum.
In an exclusive interview with The Sun, the Gossip Girl actress reveals she needed TWO personal trainers and a nutritionist to shed her baby bump for shark thriller The Shallows.
Blake, 28, and her Hollywood actor husband Ryan Reynolds, 39, became parents for the first time 18 months ago.
By last October she had to be ready to play a terrified surfer who is circled by a bloodthirsty great white shark in the movie.
She says: “I focused on training and eating well. It took two different trainers and a nutritionist to help me get into that sort of shape because it’s not normal to look like that eight months after having a kid.”
Female stars including Mila Kunis, Beyonce and Natalie Portman have all slimmed down within months of having children.
And Blake confesses she would look at Jessica Alba’s post-baby body and ask herself: “Why don’t I look like her after giving birth?”
But she believes women should not feel they have to lose weight and tone up so soon after having a child.
She says: “Women put pressure on themselves to look like a Victoria’s Secret model after having a baby. It’s absolutely absurd. It was my job to look that way.”
The results of her strict fitness and diet regime are there for all to see in her new film, which she describes as “a sexy, fun, summer movie”.
Blake spends much of her time on screen in a revealing orange bikini top.
At one point she squeezes her cleavage into a wetsuit — a close-up shot which the actress says makes her “cringe” when she sees it.
She adds: “Women are objectified much more than men in general.
“It’s the name of the game when you are doing a movie in a swimsuit. You know there is going to be that bikini shot. But how cool would it be if there wasn’t?”
The star, who has 10.5million Instagram followers and 1.9million Facebook fans, started out in showbusiness 11 years ago in coming-of-age movie The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants. She went on to make her name in teen drama series Gossip Girl.
RELATED STORIES
But The Shallows is probably the trickiest challenge of her career, as for most of the film she is the only person on screen — with only a shark and a friendly seagull for company.
Blake’s character Nancy is stranded on a rock after the shark takes a bite out of her leg.
She says: “The shark is the size of a whale.
“If sharks behaved this way we would be so screwed.
“He keeps coming back — he’s like a Terminator shark.”
In real life, Blake is not scared of the ocean’s deadliest predators, having swum with great white sharks off the coast of South Africa in 2010.
She recalls: “I was face-to-face with those majestic creatures. It was incredibly eye-opening because I was always terrified of them.
“But being in the water with them, being within their habitat, they don’t look like big, monstrous creatures. They’re beautiful, peaceful and serene.”
The hit £13million movie — low-budget by Hollywood standards — has already taken £42million in the US.
The Shallows was filmed on paradise Lord Howe Island, 370 miles north east of Sydney, Australia, and at a wave pool at the Movie World theme park in Queensland.
It was during a short break from intense 13-hour shoots in Oz that Blake struck up a friendship with pop sensation Taylor Swift.
Blake says: “When we were at Movie World I am looking at people on roller coasters every day and finally I said, ‘I can’t take it, I am coming into work an hour early one day and I’m going to get on this roller coaster’.
“It was the same time Taylor came to Brisbane for a concert, so I invited her and her crew to come with me as the park had been opened early for us.
“And she said, ‘Of course’. She came to just get to know me and my crew, which was great.”
Since then she has become part of Taylor’s squad of friends. Last month she spent time at Tay’s Rhode Island beach house with the singer’s boyfriend, Brit actor Tom Hiddleston.
Now Blake is pregnant with her second child, she is taking a rest from making movies.
She is a big fan of Britain, where husband Ryan is currently making The Hitman’s Bodyguard, with Gary Oldman. Blake has close pals who live in the UK including Florence and the Machine singer Florence Welch, who sang at Blake’s wedding in 2012, and actress Salma Hayek.
But what she enjoys most is our food and celebrity chefs, particularly Michelin-starred Heston Blumenthal — who she wants to stalk.
Blake says with a laugh: “I am such a foodie. I am trying to find out Heston Blumenthal’s address so I can go sit outside.
“There are so many yummy things. I love Wagamama — I could eat there every day.”
Eating at a noodle restaurant is down-to-earth for a Hollywood star, although her showbiz family seem a little out-of-the-ordinary if their names are anything to go by. Her actor dad, Ernie, took the surname Lively when he married Blake’s talent scout mum Elaine — even though it came from her first husband Ronnie.
The family also has an unusual obsession for giving male names to girls. Blake was named after her grandmother’s brother, and the actress named her daughter James.
Blake says: “My mum has a boy’s name, too. She goes by Elaine but her real name is actually Willy.
“So my mum has a boy’s name, I have a boy’s name and we wanted our daughter to have something strong and timeless but wasn’t a name you hear all the time.
“We didn’t want to give her a name like Humdiddly Humperdink or those amazing Hollywood names you get these days.”
And Blake Lively is certainly a name no one is going to forget.
- The Shallows opens in cinemas today.