Melissa McCarthy’s talent (and money-making) abilities are no longer in question after her huge success in 2011’s Bridesmaids and this year’s Identity Thief. So, it’s shocking and somewhat ridiculous that we’re still talking about her weight.
When questioned about Rex Reed’s review in which he calls the actress ‘tractor-sized,’ McCarthy herself seemed surprised, asking, “Why would someone OK that?” She went on to say in an interview with The New York Times, “I felt really bad for someone who is swimming in so much hate. I just thought, that’s someone who’s in a really bad spot, and I am in such a happy spot. I laugh my head off every day with my husband and my kids who are mooning me and singing me songs.”
The actress admitted the comments “may have crushed me” if they had come earlier in her career. But she’s living in “a strange epidemic of body image and body dysmorphia, [and articles like that] just add to all those younger girls, that are not in a place in their life where they can say, ‘That doesn’t reflect on me.’ That makes it more true. It means you don’t actually look good enough.”
McCarthy understands that all this attention could go away at some point, and she realizes this could be her “only time to really pick things that I 100 percent connect with.” But she’s fine if her fame disappears. “I’ve been trying to play old-lady parts since I was in my 20s,” she admitted. “So I look forward to all of that.”
All of McCarthy’s roles (including her hilarious stints as host of Saturday Night Live) tend to focus on the more kooky characters. “You push so far past the normal boundaries of what’s OK in society,” she said. “I’m always fully aware of, ‘You can’t do this.’ When someone really believes in what they’re saying, but it’s crazy, it’s like my favorite thing on earth. Crazy’s just crazy and there’s nowhere to go. You can’t have a point of view, it can be very strange, but we have to know your reasoning.”
The actress appears alongside Sandra Bullock in the new film, The Heat, which opens June 28.
