When Paltrow put on a fat suit for the Farrelly brothers’ blockbuster, an unknown acting student was hired as her body double. Two years later, Ivy Snitzer was starving to death
Ivy Snitzer has screen presence – even on Zoom – with her safety pin earrings, nose piercing and reddish-purpleish hair. Yet no one saw her face in the hit film. Now 42, and an insurance agency owner in Philadelphia, Snitzer was Gwyneth Paltrow’s body double for the role of Rosemary in 2001’s Shallow Hal. While Paltrow wore a fat suit for scenes featuring her face, Snitzer’s body was used for closeups of Rosemary’s arms, torso and thighs.
At the time, 20-year-old Snitzer was a Los Angeles-based acting student with aspirations to become an actor or comedian. “Mostly, I just wanted to be funny,” she says. One day, a friend from her improv class called her up because he had heard about “this thing”. To this day, Snitzer doesn’t know the wording of the Shallow Hal casting call. Without asking any questions, she drove with her friend to a room where casting directors “took a bunch of pictures”. A day later, Snitzer had a callback – she was invited to sit down with the film’s directors, the Farrelly brothers, and “just talk”.
