So long, Wormtail! Harry Potter star Timothy Spall looked almost unrecognizable at Italy’s Venice Film Festival on Wednesday, September 7. The actor debuted his significant weight loss at the premiere of his upcoming film The Journey.
Spall, who portrayed Peter Pettigrew in the fantasy films, worked his slimmed-down frame in a navy suit and red printed tie. The actor, 59, plays Unionist politician Ian Paisley in The Journey, which tells the true story of two political enemies who become friends during the Irish revolution.
Spall has been vocal about trying to conquer his weight issues in the past. In 2014, he cut out alcohol after suffering from exhaustion.
“I was a glutton. I loved food. I still do. But I didn’t have a thing in my mind that told me when to stop eating,” the Enchanted star told The Daily Mail in 2014. “There’s something of a chunky gene in the Spall side of the family. I was always chubby, then I got fat.”
Spall has also been in remission from leukemia since 1996, and during a 2014 interview with the New York Post, he said that cancer changed his outlook on life.
“Having gone through a serious illness – and I had a young family at the time – [there are] all the questions that you have to ask yourself about what’s going to become of them and what’s going to become of you,” Spall said at the time. “It gives you a true sense of what it is to be up against ‘it.’”