Dave Bautista explains recent weight loss as shocking before and after images emerge

Wrestler turned actor Dave Bautista has slimmed down a lot recently and some fans have been rather startled by his transformation.

Bautista is one of several wrestlers who successfully made the transition to acting, arguably the best of the bunch, and by now he's got several very impressive performances under his belt.

Plenty of filmgoers will know him from the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, while he's also been in Blade Runner 2049, the Dune films and appeared in the Knives Out sequel.

His latest movie, which he slimmed down for, is called The Killer's Game and is set to release this week (13 September).

While he's been promoting it, people have noticed that Bautista looks a lot slimmer, and the actor told Chris Van Vliet all about his weight loss.

Bautista said he 'absolutely' had started trimming down to play other roles, but had other reasons for it as well.

He told Van Vliet that another reason was 'I just got fat', explaining that he got 'uncomfortably big' for his part in Knock at the Cabin, where director M. Night Shyamalan apparently said to him, 'I don't want you to look like a powerlifter, I want you to look like a great big guy'.

The star said he had little time to put on weight so achieved it with 'french fries and pancakes', and thinks he might have 'overdone it' in retrospect.

Bautista said it 'took forever' to shed the weight he'd gained, but as he did, he started realising he was feeling some good changes.

He said: "Then I noticed the more I trimmed down the better I felt, and I also noticed the more I trimmed down the better I looked on camera, the better I looked next to other actors.

"Because typically, even at this weight it's weird because people think, like, for me people say 'god, you're skinny'.

"I even saw online some people are worried about my health and when I say it out loud to people 'I'm 6'4, 240lbs', it sounds like when you say that out loud I'm a big person.

"But to me because people have seen me so much bigger over the years they think I'm like anorexic, but I'm just a large human being.

"So at 6'4, 240lbs next to your typical actor I look like a gorilla and it's distracting."

Bautista reckons he'll 'probably lose a few more pounds' as he said he was 'killing myself to be this trim' and 'training hard'.

The Avengers Endgame star added that his calorie intake was 'pretty restricted' to around 2,500 calories a day, though Van Vliet said that was 'enough for someone my size'.

All things considered, if he feels better and happy then there should be nothing to worry about.