How is being a director like going on a diet? Both of them require commitment, cause lots of stress, and can result in dramatic weight loss.

While chatting about his happiest movie memories, “Rush” director Ron Howard revealed the experience that caused him equal parts exhaustion and elation.

“An incredibly happy movie experience was the first movie that I directed, ‘Grand Theft Auto,'” Howard told Moviefone. “Very low budget, hectic — I mean, I was 23 years old, in great condition, and I still lost fifteen pounds during the four weeks that it took us to shoot the movie.”

Wait, this was a happy experience, right?

“It was exhausting. But when it was over, my wife Cheryl was there, my parents were there, my dad had been in the movie — we wrote it together; it was kind of a family thing for Roger Corman, the famous B-movie producer. We had crashed all these cars, we’d blown up everything we were supposed to blow up, and I was sitting there having gone through the movie and I thought, I actually enjoyed this more than I ever dreamed I would. And I’d been dreaming of being a director ever since I was a little kid, and I knew that this was what I was going to try to do with my adult life.”