Eric McCormack’s former manager once told him to lose weight

It's not only actresses who are told to lose weight in Hollywood — "Will & Grace" star Eric McCormack says his former manager once told him to shed a few pounds ahead of a 1997 audition.

"It's very easy in a Calgary winter when you have a beard and several layers of clothing to disguise what beer will do to a man," the Canadian-born actor, 57, said during a remote interview for 92Y last week. "And when the beard came off — Wow! I was not going to be on 'Melrose Place' the next day, let's put it that way and I was in denial about it."

He said he was auditioning for a role on Jenny McCarthy's show "Jenny" when his manager at the time, Joan Hyler, commented on his fuller face.

"I'd gone in and I'd done really well and it looked like it was going to go my way but the next audition — the final audition — wasn't for two weeks," he explained. "My manager at the time … God bless her, she said, 'You've got two weeks … get your face back.'"

McCormack, who ended up landing the role in the pilot of "Jenny," said Hyler's comment was a "very big turning point for him," adding, "by the time I got to the pilot … I had discovered the new unbearded me."

McCormack went on to land the role of Will Truman on "Will & Grace" the following year. The show originally ran from 1998 to 2005 and was rebooted from 2017 and wrapped up its final episode last week.