Throughout Lou Diamond Phillips’ career, one role required him to immerse himself in the life of a real-life killer, leading him to undergo a significant weight loss to portray serial killer Richard Ramirez.
In 2016, Phillips starred in The Night Stalker, a drama film that took a unique spin on the killers’ story. A drifter is accused of a heinous crime he didn’t commit, and the only way to prove his innocence is to get Ramirez to confess.
As many know, Ramirez is one of America’s most infamous serial killers who terrorized Los Angeles from 1984 to 1985 and killed at least 13 people. La Bamba actor had to not only get inside Ramirez’s head to play the role, but also portray his lean physique and fox-like appearance.
“I dropped, like, 25 lbs. because I was playing him at the end of his life when he died of lymphoma,” he told Elisa Donovan on an episode of the Killer Thriller podcast.
Ramirez was convicted of 13 counts of murder, five attempted murders, and 11 sexual assaults, and sentenced to death in 1989. While awaiting his execution, he died from complications of B-cell lymphoma in 2013 at the age of 53.
To play the role, Phillips also recalls having to “pull my eyes back a little bit” to accurately portray Ramirez’s “coyote look.” The actor says they “pulled them back and changed the shape of my eye,” and the added weight loss changed the shape of his cheekbones.
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Playing the role of a serial killer isn’t an easy task, as Ramirez’s modus operandi often included lurking around neighborhoods looking for potential victims. The actor saw Ramirez as a “chilling guy” who was “incapable” of feeling sympathy over human suffering. To get into the role, Phillips even resorted to the same prowling techniques.
“I was just going to walk around for a while and if the windows were open, I was going to look into him from the street,” he explained. “That’s sort of what he did … like he was browsing in the produce section trying to figure out which apples he wanted. I parked in a neighborhood that wasn’t mine, had the hoodie, was going to walk up and down the streets and I passed a guy, you know, who was walking his dog. And as I passed him, he went, ‘Hey, Lou Diamond! Love your work.’”
Phillips has been one of the more notable actors to portray the killer on screen. In 1989, the TV movie Manhunt: Search for the Night Stalker explored his story with Gregory Cruz in the role. Various documentaries and limited series have also explored the real-life cases and accounts surrounding the murders.
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