
Romanian heartthrob Sebastian Stan has had to put in extra work to keep up with the Hollywood Chrises, and he’s showing it off in a special winter (soldier) edition of Men’s Health. The literally steamy photo shoot by fashion photographer Carter Smith shows us how he’s getting swole for his new Disney+ gig in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
Keep in mind, Stan the man once filmed a gratuitous nude scene just so all his personal training wouldn’t go to waste. So here’s hoping he keeps at it.
When it comes to fitness, Stan has also benefited from the influence of a charismatic spirit guide. He played soccer and basketball at his Rockland County, New York, high school, but he didn’t start running and going to the gym until he was in college at Rutgers University. And he didn’t get really into fitness until 2005, when he was cast in a film titled The Covenant, which Stan calls “really classic.”
Really classic, indeed: The Covenant also stars Chace Crawford, whom Stan would later join on Gossip Girl (another classic), and Taylor Kitsch. Stan plays one of five prep-school boys endowed with supernatural gifts and sick abs.
“I got a call,” Stan says. “And one of the producers said to me, ‘Look, you’re going to have to look like John Travolta in Staying Alive.’ He’s just glistening with muscles. It’s ridiculous. I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ I started to work out with a trainer, but it was my buddy Taylor Kitsch who got me into it.” With the trainer and Kitsch as his gym shepherds, Stan began exercising in earnest.
— Men’s Health