He's famed for his hulking, muscular physique, but Dave Bautista has stunned fans after slimming down for his new role. 

The professional wrestler turned actor has lost four stone while preparing for his starring role as a veteran assassin in latest film The Killer's Game. 

Bautista's new look was evident during a red carpet appearance at the Toronto Film Festival premiere of The Last Showgirl on September 6.  

'I'm getting super trimmed, this is probably the lightest I've been since I was 19 years old,' he told YouTuber Chris Van Vliet. 

Bautista, 55, began his weight loss journey after filming M. Night Shyamalan thriller Knock At The Cabin in 2022, and admits he is lighter now than he was during his early wrestling days, when he competed under the name Deacon Batista. 

'The heaviest I've ever been is 370lbs (26st). When I started Deacon, I was about 325lbs (23st),' he said. 

'Throughout most of my wrestling career I was about 290lbs (21st). Now I'm about 240lbs (17st).

'And I went a year and a half ago for Knock at the Cabin, I went 315lbs (23st). And that's when the nightmare started.'

Bautista previously shared an astonishing throwback snap to when he was 16 years old and had none of the tattoos that now cover his body.

In his 30s, he embarked on a successful career in pro wrestling and MMA, before becoming a movie star at age 45 in Guardians Of The Galaxy.

Over the course of his adult life, his arms and torso gradually became blanketed with tattoos, including the Greek and Philippine flags in honor of his heritage.

But in the flashback he posted to Instagram this week, he stood in a swimsuit in front of an ocean view, revealing he had no body art at the time.

The picture was taken near the end of a rough childhood blighted by poverty and crime - during which he himself got arrested in his early teens.

Bautista experienced a difficult upbringing that included stints in the more dangerous neighborhoods in and around Washington, DC.

When he was a little boy, a corpse was discovered on his front lawn and he watched a shooting victim die in the street in front of his home.

He, his sister, and some of the other children in the neighborhood were 'all standing around looking at this poor guy who was dying,' Dave recalled later in his memoirs. 'I think some of us were even telling jokes.'

The actor confessed: 'By the time I was 13, I started getting in a lot more trouble for skipping school. I also got arrested for petty stuff. I'd get detention or juvenile hall, but the punishment wasn’t severe; I never spent more than a day in jail.'

Bautista insisted he 'wasn't stealing or breaking the law to get back at anyone or because I was mad or anything like that. I was stealing because all my friends were doing it. It was no big deal. It just wasn’t out of the norm. It was what you did.'

He added: 'It wasn’t that I was stealing cars or doing dope or anything really, really bad. But I was definitely a thug, and everyone was afraid of where I was headed.'

By age 17 he was on his own, and he drifted eventually into a career as a nightclub bouncer until he engaged in a brawl at work that resulted in another arrest.

He finally escaped poverty in his 30s, when he launched his wildly successful run in pro wrestling and became a four-time World Heavyweight Champion.

By the mid-2000s, he was also slowly building an acting career, culminating in his rise to international movie stardom in the 2014 film Guardians Of The Galaxy.

Amid a cast that included Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel, Bautista featured as the hulking Drax The Destroyer.

The movie triggered Bautista's lucrative run in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including in Avengers: Endgame, the second highest-grossing motion picture of all time.

He has also dipped his toe in a number of other franchises, including the Knives Out film series and the Dune movies starring TImothee Chalamet.

Bautista has a wide array of projects currently in the pipeline, including a turn as Beowulf in the upcoming film Grendel, based on a novel that flips the Old English epic to tell the story through the eyes of its villainous monster.