Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
How Daniel starved on one boiled egg a day to play me in the jungle
ACTOR Daniel Radcliffe couldn’t wait to get his teeth into a new role... but then he did starve himself for almost two months.
The Harry Potter star ate just one boiled egg a day to lose weight and play a lost trekker in the film Jungle.
Yossi Ghinsburg, 58, had survived on TWO raw eggs a day – snaffled from chicken nests as he battled through the Bolivian rainforest as a 21-year-old explorer. The Israeli was missing for three weeks and lost 35lbs as hunger, infection and disease took a toll.
His feet were reduced to bloodied slabs of meat as he trudged on and on. Parasites burrowed into his skin.
He faced attacks from wild boar, the threat of poisonous snakes and even made a flamethrower from mosquito spray and a lighter to repel a stalking jaguar. “I learned that trick from a James Bond movie,” said Yossi.
At one point, delirious with agony, he stood under a tree and shook stinging fire ants on to his face – as a distraction from the pain in his feet.
Then he almost drowned in monsoon floods. Just when his spirit was breaking he had hallucinations of a woman alongside him. He slept next to “her” each night and cared for her each day – and, somehow, that kept him going.
The ordeal fascinated Daniel and he was honoured to portray the Israeli’s descent into mental and physical hell.
Yossi told of meeting Daniel in
Colombia as they filmed the tale of his 1981 ordeal. He said: “We sat, we talked, we went over the script. It was only when we started shooting I realised his strength of character.
“He was starving himself. He didn’t have to. He was pretty thin to begin. But he wanted to feel what I did. He could not be there with a full tummy, eating steak and pretending he was starving in the jungle. He wanted to feel hungry. It was quite admirable to see him surviving on one hard boiled egg when there was a chef on site and nice food. We filmed for three months.
“Because they don’t shoot in sequence, he had to diet twice ( for four weeks at a time).
“There are techniques to make people look thin but he didn’t want that. He lost quite a lot of weight.” Jungle, which is out this week, tells how Yossi left behind his safe life in Tel Aviv to seek adventure in the Amazon rainforest. He and adventurers Kevin Gale and Marcus Stamm met rogue guide Karl Ruchprecter, who led them into the jungle for what was meant to be a four-day trek.
Austrian Karl said he was a geologist and promised to lead them to a river full of gold and a lost tribe.
But after two weeks – surviving on monkeys which they shot and cooked – they had found nothing.
Then the nightmare began when the group became separated. Yossi wandered lost and alone for three treacherous weeks. His ordeal only ended when he stumbled across Kevin and a search party on a stretch of river. Yossi spent three months recovering in hospital.
Tragically, Marcus and Karl – who turned out to be a wanted criminal – were never to be seen
Daniel was brilliant. He got inside my head so he could be like me... YOSSI GHINSBURG ON ACTOR’S COMMITMENT
again. Now a technology entrepreneur, Yossi tried to turn his story into a Hollywood movie in the 1990s with Emilio Estevez in the lead role – but the venture fell through. So he was thrilled when Daniel signed up... even if he wasn’t entirely convinced by his accent.
Yossi, who splits his time between Australia, Israel and the US, added: “Once Daniel was on board he did a lot of work talking to me and trying to get into my head, into my young head, trying to figure out how I was at that time.
“His level of commitment was brilliant. He did a lot to be like me.
TURMOIL
“It was surreal seeing Daniel as me. But I didn’t feel it was me. It was very loyal to what I went through. It was a very good interpretation of me but it wasn’t eerie.
“While other people can appreciate his Israeli accent, I couldn’t see it myself in his voice.
“He’s doing a great version of me and I’m very honoured he plays me.” Moviegoers will see Daniel cut a parasite out of his own head during his jungle turmoil.
Reliving the moment, Yossi said: “I was injured, all my body was cut and my cuts were open because, as I was wet day and night, nothing would heal. The bugs got in, some bit you and others laid larvae under the skin. So I had worms within.
“They were under my skin and I was in excruciating pain.
“The worst thing were my feet. They were wet so fungal infection was spreading.
“Walking all day with wet, muddy socks rubbed the skin off and I had no skin left on my feet.
“They were chunks of raw flesh. But I couldn’t stop walking, I had to keep going. Dying wasn’t an option.” On the seventeenth day of his plight, Yossi’s spirit broke and he conceded defeat – only for a “miracle” to happen.
He explained: “An aeroplane passed and I had a surge of hope. “I thought if they saw me it would all be over. They couldn’t see me. I collapsed and started crying. I prayed and gave up.
“Then I had this miracle. A young woman suddenly appeared next to me in the mud. I believed her to be real.
“For two days I took care of her and made her a place to sleep. I gathered branches and covered her.
“I talked to her as if she was a real person. Imagination played a huge role in my survival.
“So if she was my imagination, it was a coping mechanism. I wouldn’t do it for myself but I’d do it for her. That’s what saved my life.” It was four days later that Yossi was eventually rescued. Now a married father-of-four, he travels the world doing motivational talks.
He has no regrets about going on the trip – and has travelled back to the rainforest he was once lost in.
But he still feels guilt over the loss of his friend Marcus, adding: “That still is the deepest part of the story, it’s my own shadow.
“I wasn’t there for my best friend in the moment he needed me the most. I’ve had existential trauma.
“I feel that I experienced interventions and miracles so I had questions.
“Like, ‘Why me?’. It created a different path.
“My life became a life of enquiry, travel, of spiritual quests. In a way it was a blessing, I wouldn’t trade it.
“If it wasn’t for this, I would probably be an advertising executive in Tel Aviv. That was the career I envisaged for myself. I’m happy that my life took this turn.”
Jungle is in cinemas from October 20.
All my body was cut, the bugs laid larvae in me... it was excruciating SURVIVOR YOSSI ON HIS THREE-WEEK JUNGLE HELL