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Katee Sackhoff is opening up about the lengths she’s gone to for her craft — revealing she once pushed her body so far, she stopped getting her period. The Battlestar Galactica and The Mandalorian star reflected on her intense preparation for Netflix’s Another Life during a new episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, published Saturday. Sackhoff explained that she wanted to physically embody the toll of space travel in the 2019–2021 sci-fi drama, which followed astronaut Niko Breckinridge (Sackhoff) as she led a mission to investigate an alien artifact that landed on Earth. “I wanted to look gaunt and dehydrated in the initial scenes,” she said, referring to her character’s awakening from cryosleep in the series premiere. To achieve that look, Sackhoff said she first built muscle and leaned out before cutting her calorie intake to around 1,500 a day. “The trick worked,” she admitted. “But I straight-up stopped getting my period.” Realizing she’d taken things too far, Sackhoff said she was relieved to regain weight later in the season as her character adjusted to life aboard the ship. “At that moment, I knew I went too far,” she added. While Another Life lasted two seasons before Netflix canceled it in 2022, the show developed a loyal fanbase among sci-fi lovers — and gave Sackhoff another commanding lead role following her Battlestar Galactica breakout. Plenty of actors have taken on extreme transformations for roles — from Christian Bale to Rooney Mara — but Sackhoff’s story is a reminder that even in sci-fi, some experiments are better left off-screen.
