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There's a big difference between the Allen Garfield who's holding court in his cluttered living room and the tubby fellow who's in the photo by his front door, posing with Peter Falk on the set of "The Brink's Job."
Almost 90 pounds.
For years, Garfield was known as the chubby character actor, the feisty fat man who specialized in playing the part of obnoxious, aggressive hustlers, always armed with a new lecherous scheme. But if you've seen him on film the last couple of years, either as a gambler in "The Cotton Club," a nutty film producer in "The State of Things" or a harassed high school instructor in "Teachers," you've seen a leaner new specimen-someone whose loss has been his gain.
"I was an addict whose drug of choice was food," says Garfield, an articulate, animated man who speaks with refreshing candor about what he calls his "amazing Humpty-Dumpty existence."
"Just look at me in that picture-was I porky or what? I mean, if you look at me then, you'd swear I weighed 300 pounds. After a while, I stopped counting."
With his bulk, there was little chance of Garfield landing many starring roles. In fact, he discovered that his obnoxious roles onscreen weren't so far removed from his combative attitude offscreen. Even worse, he began to lose sight of the pleasure of acting itself.
"There's just no way you can enjoy yourself when you're eating yourself to death. The weight was like a ton of misery that was keeping me from being happy."
For the last five years, Garfield has been a member of an overeaters' self-help organization, attending meetings virtually every day. He now weighs 170 pounds, down from a high of nearly 260.
Today, relaxing in the local apartment he shares with a friendly pooch he found in an Italian forest, the 46-year-old actor seems buoyed by an air of infectious self-confidence, like a man who has shed an extra, unwanted layer of skin.
He has a part in "Desert Bloom," a Columbia film starring Jon Voight that's due out next month, as well as a...