It was the era of heroin chic. When iconic supermodel Kate Moss was at the height of her modeling career in the 1990s, she was often pictured at clubs with a cigarette, a far cry from today’s trends of Pilates and matcha lattes.
So when actor Ellie Bamber came to play Moss in the recently released movie “Moss & Freud,” she had her work cut out. How to create Moss’s supermodel physique without resorting to unhealthy methods?
She worked with trainer Luke Worthington
Bamber, who has also starred in “Red, White & Royal Blue” and “William Tell,” worked with film and TV personal trainer Luke Worthington to prepare to embody Moss, a process that ultimately took years due to various filming delays.
Worthington and Bamber started working together in January 2022 and focused on film prep from December of that year, expecting to shoot in summer 2023. Filming was postponed until spring/summer 2024. They also had to contend with a fractured ankle, but they got Bamber ready to play Moss with a startling likeness.
“Ultimately, it wasn’t going to be a perfect like-for-like, but we wanted to try to get as close to Kate as we could, but it was really important for both of us that I remained really healthy,” Bamber told Business Insider. “One of the goals was also for me to feel good, because I’m nude quite a lot in the film and that’s kind of daunting in itself, so I just wanted to feel really in tune with my body and really confident.”
In 2017, Kate Moss told The Guardian that she never used to eat salads or go to the gym. “Ellie was portraying somebody who perhaps wasn’t overly health-conscious at that particular phase of their life, but compromising her health was never going to be something that we would consider,” said Worthington.
Here’s how they made it happen.
High-intensity strength training
Bamber did high-intensity strength training at least three times a week, sometimes as many as five or six, but the extra sessions were a bonus. They would typically ratchet up training before supposedly starting filming, and then dial back to a more sustainable routine when things got delayed.
Worthington had Bamber working in tri-sets consisting of an upper-body exercise, a lower-body exercise, and a core exercise, back-to-back. This means that the blood rushes from one area of the body to another, improving cardiovascular capacity and building strength.
“For example, she’s doing a set of squats and a set of push-ups. If you do those on their own, they are strengthening exercises. If you do them back to back, there’s the metabolic demands, the caloric demand of that goes exponentially higher,” Worthington said. “So, by being smart about how we grouped exercises together, it meant that we could be quite efficient with the workouts and not keep her in the gym for hours. She’s getting free cardio, basically.”
When Bamber fell off a horse while filming a different movie and broke her ankle, training had to be a little more creative. Alongside seeing a physio, Bamber would come to the gym on crutches with her boot on, and Worthington would have her do modified exercises targeting the rest of her body.
Slimming without calorie-counting
Strength training was also an important part of helping Bamber maintain muscle mass while sculpting a supermodel physique through a gentle calorie deficit.
“I love pasta, and I still want to be able to go out for dinner with my friends,” Bamber said, so she didn’t want to follow a restrictive diet plan.
With that in mind, there was no calorie-counting or weighing herself. They used photos to track Bamber’s progress and aimed for a calorie deficit of no more than 10% (without strictly tracking). Worthington suggested loosely measuring portion sizes using her hands. The aim was to make slow, gradual changes, he said.
“Slow and steady wins the race, and we communicated all the time about how Ellie’s energy, mood, and concentration were, so we could see if we were pushing too hard,” Worthington added.
She often drank smoothies for breakfast
When she needed a weekend “off,” she had it.
“The harder it is for someone, the less easy it is for them to stick to it,” Worthington said. “So if we make one change at a time, and try to keep those changes manageable, you’ve got more of a chance of sticking to it, which means you get the result that you want.”
The nutrition strategy evolved: For most of the prep, Bamber tried to eat six portions of cruciferous vegetables (like broccoli and cauliflower) per day, meaning she filled up on low-calorie, high-volume, nutritious foods. The focus was on adding, rather than subtracting.
She often drank a breakfast smoothie consisting of greens, fruit, protein, and flax seeds. “It was an easy way of getting a load of nutrients and a good amount of protein at the start of the day without excessive calories,” Worthington said. This then evolved to a yogurt bowl with skyr and similar ingredients.
While recovering from her fractured ankle, she moved to an intentional calorie surplus with plenty of protein to promote healing for six weeks.
Later in the process, Bamber began intermittent fasting while maintaining flexibility. If filming started early, she would eat earlier to have enough energy.
“It was about finding a balance of pushing myself as hard as I could, but then also knowing that if I needed to back off, that was OK,” said Bamber.
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