Bill Skarsgard's Crow diet

Bill Skarsgard got in shape for 'The Crow' by eating steak tartare and raw eggs.

The 34-year-old actor stars in the reboot of the 1994 movie as Eric / The Crow, a man who is resurrected to avenge the deaths of himself and his girlfriend Shelly (played by FKA twigs) and Bill went on a strict diet for the role.

Director Rupert Sanders told Variety: "I’d take Bill out to dinner. I’d always just order for him because I knew what he was eating. It’s basically steak tartare and raw eggs. He was in the gym a lot. He ate very healthily and put us all to shame when we were eating burgers and hot dogs and working late at night in the Czech summer.”

Bill revealed diet and exercise was the key to achieving the right look for the movie.

He said: "I’d already been training for quite a while. Me and my trainer kept adding a little bit of weight onto what I’d already be, but I didn’t want to be too big either. It was a tricky one, because they wanted the Crow to be ripped, but the character Eric shouldn’t be. I didn’t feel like the character should be thin, but you can’t afford to split it into six months, the ‘Raging Bull’ kind of way. So we did a lot of weight training and ate a lot of protein.”

Rupert also revealed he was impressed by Bill's dedication to the stunt sequences.

He said: "There was a lot of complex stunt work, and Bill did so much of it himself. As you can see, he’s an incredibly physical person. His body in the movie is incredible. When he’s on, he’s a real machine of destruction, but also he played these incredible moments of softness and empathy, which really just give the action sequences a lot more of an emotional connection, which is why I think people are really responding to them. They’re not just gratuitous violence. You really feel that you’re in there with the character.”