Sklenar told the magazine he was intrigued by the film after previously working in an underground bodybuilding gym. <\/p>\n
\u201cI personally was drawn to it because I grew up in northern New Jersey working in an underground bodybuilding gym. When I was 15, I was cleaning the floors, and by 18, I was a trainer, training everybody and running the whole gym,\u201d he shared. \u201cThere was an MMA gym upstairs, and I would just train MMA all day and then train other people. I started doing martial arts when I was really little, like six.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Brandon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Brandon-Sklenar-lc-261111-184835.jpg\")
Brandon Sklenar at “The Housemaid” premiere on Dec. 15, 2025 in Hollywood.Axelle\/Bauer-Griffin \/ FilmMagic<\/p>\n
Since he used to work and train in that world, he saw firsthand the posing, diets and steroids that are involved. <\/p>\n
Sklenar noted, \u201cThere is an element of \u2018Iron Jane\u2019 that really goes into body image and body dysmorphia, which is something that I just really feel needs to be talked about more, especially in this age of social media and fitness influencers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is something I\u2019ve struggled with, so we really wanted to translate that, and (director Lissette Feliciano) was really open to working with me on getting across (my character) Josh\u2019s dysmorphia and what he goes through,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Housemaid\u201d star shared more details about his past struggles, revealing that they began when he was a child. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was a little kid \u2014 short, chunky. I swam in a T-shirt and got made fun of. Then I had a growth spurt and became really lanky, and I got made fun of for that,\u201d he recalled. \u201cSo I started training a lot and got obsessed with working out, like, \u2018I\u2019ll show them.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The desire to prove them wrong turned into \u201ca kind of obsession,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt becomes a very weird thing, where you see yourself completely differently than pretty much anybody else does, and usually in not a good way,\u201d he explained. <\/p>\n
Sklenar said he is still tackling his body image issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cTherapy helps for sure. If you look at me now as a 36-year-old man, you\u2019d never guess it, but I still very much feel like that 12-year-old chunky kid \u2014 that sense of nothing is ever good enough,\u201d he revealed. \u201cYou have to find a way to check your self-talk, because that\u2019s really where it begins and ends \u2014 but it\u2019s easier said than done.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that working on \u201cIron Jane\u201d allowed him to confront some of his insecurities. He shared details of one scene that includes a full-body shot as he poses. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been pretty much naked in a film before, but it\u2019s a whole different thing to literally be posing and have the camera panning up and down your body, detailing everything. When I was shooting that scene, I was so uncomfortable. Dealing with my issues, it was very challenging to work through that,\u201d he pointed out. <\/p>\n
But, Sklenar said he reminded himself that Gonz\u00e1lez had to shoot that same type of scene repeatedly throughout filming. <\/p>\n
\u201cEiza trained her a** off, and she got in incredible shape for this film. I just have so much respect for her,\u201d he praised. <\/p>\n
\u201cIron Jane,\u201d which marks Sklenar\u2019s first producer credit under his Vista Lane Pictures banner, is expected to debut at festivals next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Actor Brandon Sklenar is opening up about struggling with body dysmorphia from a young age and how the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":832520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[102,1906,6623,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-832519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/832520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}