Photo: Peter Yang

Even before Jamal Woolard landed the role of the Notorious B.I.G., he entered what he calls "Biggie Boot Camp": For January's biopic Notorious, he studied the late rapper's lisp ("His tongue lays down in his mouth"), his waddle ("The same as Penguin in Batman"), the way he always held his head back on an angle ("Like a king looking down at his subjects"). And even though Woolard was already big enough to have notched a Type-2-diabetes diagnosis, he pushed his six-foot-three-inch frame up to 340 pounds. "I was just pigging out," says Woolard. "My doctor told me, 'You really are ready to die.' " But Woolard needed the gig. After growing up in Biggie's hood of Bed-Stuy, he spent years rapping under the name Gravy, but lost a record deal and had a baby on the way. "God made this happen," he says. Or maybe it was Biggie's mom, who took one look at Woolard and said, "That's my son." BRIAN HIATT

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