Matt Bomer Prepared His Kids as Best He Could for 'Normal Heart' Weight Loss

Matt Bomer is as handsome as ever on the cover of HIV Plus magazine’s July/August 2014 issue.

Here’s what the 36-year-old The Normal Heart actor had to share with the mag:

On preparing his kids for his extreme weight loss: “I felt a tremendous responsibility in playing this role, and part of it was creating that physical reality for the second half of the film. It was sort of one month of casual weight loss and then two months of really aggressive weight loss, and that’s when I left my family, toward the end of the second month, and then just lived on my own in New York and really tried to focus on really solely what Felix was going through. I obviously consulted someone and I prepared our kids as best I could, but I felt it was best for me to be away at that point in time until I sort of finished the project and could start eating again.”

On the effect of filming the movie: “I don’t know how you could be a part of this movie and not be changed on some level, unless you’re just really a slab of concrete. It’s so rare that you get to portray a well-written character that’s fully developed and is also part of a story that you hope has some type of social significance, and also that changes you.”

On filming sex scenes with Mark Ruffalo: “Whenever you’re dealing with big celebrities like that on a set, the ball is really in their court to extend the olive branch of comfortability, and Mark was so amazing about that�”he doesn’t bring a lot of ego to the set. I mean, from day one, he treated me with such profound respect and patience, so I felt really comfortable being able to go to those places with him. Because regardless of the type of intimate scene you’re filming it’s never a terribly comfortable situation. No matter what you’re doing, really you’re just trying to commit to the story from ‘action’ to ‘cut.’ I think we both knew, coming from theater, that we didn’t have six weeks of rehearsal or three weeks of rehearsal to piece things together, and so from the very beginning, we related to each other more or less in character…we tried to stay in that zone, so when it became a professional thing we didn’t have to suddenly leap into each other’s arms.”

For more from Matt, visit HIVPlusMag.com. Bigger cover inside…