- - Nick Frost Says His Tattoos Became a ‘Suit of Armor’ So People Didn't Focus on Him 'Being a Mega Fatty'

Vanessa EtienneJanuary 30, 2026 at 6:23 AM

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Nick Frost

Nick Frost/Instagram

Nick Frost opened up about feeling bad about the way he looked, recalling people laughing at him at the beach

The actor, 53, said that after he got tattoos, he noticed people focused less on his weight

He admits that his tattoos became his “suit of armor”

Nick Frost is sharing the reason why his tattoos felt like a “suit of armor.”

In a new interview with The Guardian published Thursday, Jan. 29, the Shaun of the Dead actor opened up about getting a lot of his tattoos later in life. The 53-year-old said his desire for ink started while struggling with his weight.

“I had one tattoo when I was 20. I fainted within five seconds. When I woke up, there were two Hells Angels lifting me back into my chair.

Frost said he thought he would never get another tattoo but changed his mind when he was 40 after his dad died of lung cancer. He said he started getting tattoos “as a way to turn spiritual pain into physical pain, and try to exorcise it.”

“Now I’m 53, my whole top and arms are covered,” she said. “It eventually got past exorcising dead family demons, to enjoying the pain a bit.”

“I struggled for a long time with how I looked, in terms of being a mega fatty, and not being able to go to the beach without people laughing at you,” he continued. “The tattoos meant people didn’t focus on how much you weighed, so it was like a suit of armor.”

Nick Frost

Lia Toby/Getty

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Frost has spoken about his weight before and his past struggles with binge eating, which began at an early age.

In a June 2025 interview, the actor explained that after quitting drugs and alcohol, he swapped his vices for a dependency on food and eventually weighed over 490 lbs.

However, he finally realized that his food addiction would “kill” him.

“Food had been my first addiction when I was 10,” he told the Observer. “And I realised that it’s fine to stop all that s--- [drink and drugs]. But then going in the car and parking down by the river when it was nighttime and eating a tier of a wedding cake, that’s going to f—ing kill you, as well.”

“Just a realization that I would die,” he said. “And a realisation that I had very young children, and this is how I am, and they’re going to be left without a dad. It was like, ‘What the f--- are you doing, you nutter?’ "

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”