MENS HEALTH UKWould a Joe Manganiello with flabby abs be as sweet?!
Luckily for all of us, that's something we'll never have to answer. Because True Blood's resident werewolf has basically made a name for himself delivering six-pack attacks on the big and small screens (he got to strip it all off for Magic Mike, too).
But that wasn't always the case. In fact, Joe tells Men's Health that he was once deemed "too healthy" for Hollywood. Um, come again?!
"I got to L.A. in 2000, when we were coming off the ‘90s," Joe reveals to the fitness magazine. "Women looked like men and the men all looked like women. I was constantly being told, ‘You're too healthy.' So there were four years where I essentially didn't work as an actor."
It almost sounds too crazy to be true, huh?!
It was, after all, Mr. Manganiello's bulging biceps (and all that other muscle) that made him some serious competition for blond bad boy Alexander Skarsgård and the oh-so-charming Stephen Moyer on HBO's True Blood.
And the pay cable's lenient views on nudity allowed us to see a whole lot of Joe—though no one was complaining.
"For a while I tried becoming this chain-smoking artiste dude who watched what he ate," Joe continues. "But I hated it. I was happier going back to my roots: training like men do in my hometown of Pittsburgh."
And sticking to his rock-hard roots has certainly paid off. The dude is covering a steamy summer issue of the magazine, which perfectly coincides with the release date for his next movie, Magic Mike (which hits theaters June 29).
And it might not just be his abs, arms and pecs that get shown off in that par-tick flick. His character is, after all, named Big Dick Richie.
"We were rolling around on the ground laughing, trying to crack each other up, man-handling groups of 200 female extras every day," Joe gushes to the mag about his time on set with the likes of Channing Tatum and Matt Bomer.
Joe jokes, "There are guys who are going to divorce their wives after they see what they did as extras in this movie."
Like, say, ripping off Matthew McConaughey's thong, for one. Have we mentioned yet that we're excited for this film?!
And Hollywood, thank you for overlooking Joe's 24-pack and giving him a shot on the silver screen. Really, thank you.