So, you’d have to be living under a rock to have seen a recent picture of Jonah Hill and to not have noticed how much weight he has lost. I’m not normally one of those people who can tell if an actor or actress has put on or taken off a few pounds, but Hill has definitely lost more than just a few pounds. One might even say that he’s lost an entire person!

I mean, I guess it is a definite possibility to have just missed Hill’s new look because he’s not really that big of a star (not yet anyway) and therefore not that highly photographed (compared to a Johnny Depp or Brad Pitt, let’s say). After all, the last movie he was in, where he didn’t play an animated character, was the just-okay Get Him to the Greek, and then the independent Cyrus before that. And although he is starring in the upcoming David Gorden Green’s quasi-homage to Adventures in Babysitting, The Sitter and alongside Brad Pitt, Robin Wright and Phillip Seymour Hoffman in this fall’s Bennett Miller adaptation of Moneyball, it is the same-looking (and, more importantly, same-weighing) Jonah Hill we have all grown to love in movies like Superbad and Knocked Up.

But here’s the thing. Since his weight loss (or maybe during, given the timing), Jonah Hill has been cast in two relatively, or rather hopefully, big hits, and is now in negotiations to join a third. Hill will be in 21 Jump Street, which he also co-wrote, with Channing Tatum and Johnny Depp and The Good Time Gang with Mark Wahlberg. Now, news has just broke that he is most likely joining the cast of the Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg co-written comedy Neighborhood Watch of which Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn are already attached. And Hill has already signed on to voice Snotlout in How to Train Your Dragon 2, to boot!

I just have to wonder if the long-time working Hill is set to be one of the next (small but) big things? Not to necessarily say that Hill is going to be the next Hollywood heartthrob, but he’s definitely getting more (and bigger) roles than he has ever before. And what I’m wondering even more is if his recently up-ed star power just happens to coincide with his more-than-just-noticeable weight loss, or if it is, in fact, in direct correlation of said weight loss? I’m not trying to be vain or anything, I’m just pointing out the facts here, guys.

I guess in the end it doesn’t really matter, just as long as Hill keeps banking these jobs, because really, it has been a long time coming.