Inside 'Super Size Me' Director Morgan Spurlock's Complicated Legacy

Morgan Spurlock weathered ups and downs prior to his death at age 53.

The filmmaker was best known for directing 2004’s Super Size Me, a documentary in which he only ate McDonald’s meals for a month. The project earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature.

Spurlock also created the 2011 documentary The Greatest Movie Ever Sold about advertising and product placement, followed by the 2012 series Morgan Spurlock’s New Britannia. He directed One Direction’s concert film, This Is Us, that same year, produced Losing It With John Stamos and, per his IMDB credits, was recently in production as the director of Sue.

Spurlock had since resigned from the public eye before his brother Craig Spurlock announced in May 2024 that Morgan died following a battle with cancer.

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“It was a sad day, as we said goodbye to my brother Morgan,” Craig said in a statement to Us Weekly. “Morgan gave so much through his art, ideas, and generosity. The world has lost a true creative genius and a special man. I am so proud to have worked together with him.”

Keep scrolling for an explanation of Morgan’s complicated legacy:

Family Life

Morgan is survived by sons Laken and Kallen, parents Phyllis and Ben Spurlock, brothers Craig and Barry Spurlock, as well as multiple nieces, nephews and sisters-in-law.

Morgan shared Laken with ex-wife Alexandra Jamieson and Kallen with ex-wife Sara Bernstein. Morgan and Jamieson, a vegan chef who appeared in Super Size Me, split in 2011. He later married Bernstein in 2016. At the time of Morgan’s death, their divorce was still ongoing. Us confirmed in May 2024 that there was a proposed judgment issued but nothing had been finalized.

Health Concerns

While Super Size Me intended to increase public awareness about fast food dining amid America’s obesity epidemic, Morgan’s experiment led to various health issues.

“Ever since making the movie, I can put on four or five pounds in a weekend so easily,” he told Civil Eats in 2010. “It’s incredible how my body has kind of lost its resiliency. Part of that comes with age, but it also comes with your body having all these additional fat cells that weren’t in your body before.”

Morgan added, “As you create fat cells to store fat and you lose weight and those fat cells get smaller, they don’t magically vanish. They are still in your body, still swimming around waiting for you to overeat so they can store more fat.”

While Morgan died from complications of cancer, further details about his diagnosis and health battle were not made public.

Sexual Misconduct Scandal

As Morgan prepared to release Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken! in 2017, he admitted to sexual misconduct. In a lengthy statement shared in light of the #MeToo movement, Morgan said that he was “part of the problem” in Hollywood.

“As I sit around watching hero after hero, man after man, fall at the realization of their past indiscretions, I don’t sit by and wonder ‘Who will be next?’ I wonder, ‘When will they come for me?’” he began via social media in December 2017. “You see, I’ve come to understand after months of these revelations, that I am not some innocent bystander, I am also a part of the problem.”

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Morgan continued at the time: “Over my life, there have been many instances that parallel what we see everyday in the news. When I was in college, a girl who I hooked up with on a one night stand accused me of rape. Not outright. There were no charges or investigations, but she wrote about the instance in a short story writing class and called me by name. A female friend who was in the class told me about it afterwards.”

Morgan initially thought the interaction was consensual, noting that he “was floored” when the alleged victim claimed it wasn’t. In his social media message, Morgan pledged to do better moving forward.

Addiction Battle

After Morgan’s misconduct scandal made headlines, he entered a treatment facility for alcohol abuse.

“I was self-medicating for a long time,” he later told Deadline in 2019. “A lot of this began I guess around, like, 2010, 2011. It was even before that — Super Size Me came out in 2004 — but I think it just kind of amplified more as more started to happen.”

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).