True Blood's Joe Manganiello GQ July 2011

The Big Bad Wolf"True Blood's"
Joe Manganiello chats with GQ about how he went from delivering packages to starring as a ripped werewolf.
By Willa PaskinPhotographs by Carter Smith

There's no denying it: Joe Manganiello looks good without a shirt. This fact has not gone unnoticed by HBO, for whom he frequently flexes as an oft-nude werewolf
on "True Blood." Ask him about his physique, though, and he'll insist he's just following the script: "If Alcide was described as weighing 300 pounds with a comb-over and missing his front teeth, that's what I would look like." Luckily for Manganiello's career, he's not playing a guy with a gap-toothed smile. It's his He-Man physique that helped turn a six-episode stint into a regular gig, raising his profile high enough to audition for Zack Snyder's Superman reboot. "He and his wife are huge fans of 'True Blood,'" Manganiello explains. While Snyder ultimately went another way, Manganiello, 34, isn't complaining. A few short years ago, he was paying his bills working as a roadie and as a delivery man for a masonry company. As for the new season of "True Blood," spoilers are as hard to come by as clothing on-set. So, any inhibitions left at all? "Once they yell action," he says, "you're a werewolf and you're not thinking about it. But before, there's a boom guy crouched behind you at ass level." Who says werewolves don't blush?