Balance: Healthy Hollywood Living‘Walking Dead’ star Andrew Lincoln: ‘I don’t subscribe’ to the six-pack abs phenomenon
Andrew Lincoln has spent most of his acting career making a name for himself in his native England, with his films and TV shows rarely crossing the pond (except in the case of the 2003 romantic dramedy "Love Actually"), but his life changed when he was cast in an American comic-book-based TV show about zombies (yes, zombies) called "The Walking Dead." After premiering in late 2010 on AMC, the show become one of cable's most successful TV dramas currently on the air, with Lincoln playing the lead character, a deputy sheriff trying to help lead his community in a chaotic, post-apocalyptic world.
Up until then, he tells Men's Health, "I'd played sort of jokey, Jack the Lad kinds of roles. Romantic roles. Period dramas." To land the part, he proved his acting skills through an audition tape of himself speaking with a Southern drawl. And, since the series started out with his character wandering around for days in search of his family, the lack of sleep Lincoln was dealing with in real life as the dad of a newborn son at the time helped him look the part. In addition to his son, Lincoln has a 5-year-old daughter with wife Gael Anderson.
He may be a bona fide American TV star now, but the 39-year-old hasn't gone Hollywood when it comes to fitness. "The whole vanity aspect of building up different muscles — I have no interest. I'm probably talking to the wrong magazine, but this six-pack phenomenon in acting, I just don't subscribe to it."
And as far as daily exercise, Lincoln, who ran a marathon with his mother a few years ago, has that covered too thanks to the physical demands of his acting gig. No personal trainer needed.
"Of course, I want to be in good shape and be fit, but I want to have stamina. It's not an exercise in vanity. It's about being able to do stuff," he explains in the magazine's October issue. "On Friday I did an 18-hour day, including travel. I was up at quarter to six in the morning and got home at half past midnight. The day before we'd been outdoors all day. It was 90 to 95, and the humidity was up. So I don't need a trainer. I've got a zombie apocalypse to keep me fit."
The October issue of Men's Health is on newsstands now.
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