Ben Foster says he took drugs to play Lance Armstrong in ‘The Program’

Ben Foster really likes to get prepared for a role, so to get ready to play Lance Armstrong, he actually took drugs in order to understand the toll they take on the body. He stars as the disgraced former cyclist in Stephen Frears’ The Program.

Foster talked about preparing for the role in an interview with The Guardian ahead of the film’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this weekend.

“I don’t want to talk about the names of the drugs I took,” Foster said, noting that he would never recommend that another actor do this. “These are very serious chemicals and they affect your body in real ways. For my own investigation it was important for me privately to understand it. And they work.”

While Foster does what he needs to do to prepare, The Guardian’s Ryan Gilbey wondered why he didn’t actually take meth to prepare for Alpha Dog (2006), in which he played a meth addict. In that case, he was worried about what would happen after filming wrapped.

“In all transparency, I rolled with those guys on Alpha Dog and I bought their drugs but you have to ask yourself how far you can go and still come back,” he explained. “I had been losing friends to crystal meth. The proximity to it was enough that I didn’t need to take that door.”

Foster also said that the drugs he took for The Program had serious consequences and he’s only just started to recover.

“There’s a fallout,” he said. “Doping affects your mind. It doesn’t make you feel high.” He later continued, “I don’t know how to separate the chemical influence from the psychological attachment I had to the character. If it’s working, it keeps you up at night. This is losing your marbles, right? They’re definitely rolling around. They’re under the couch but they’re retrievable.”

Hopefully for Foster, all that hard work will pay off. The Program also stars Lee Pace, Jesse Plemons and Dustin Hoffman.

screenshot from YouTube Trailer