Charlize Theron can do it all. She’s gorgeous and smart, and has shown the ability to play the entire spectrum of roles. She’s also shown she’s willing to undergo some serious changes to better play her part. For Mad Max Fury Road, Theron packed on serious muscle and shaved her head to play Furiosa. Previously, she gained 30lbs, shaved off her eyebrows and wore false teeth for her role in Monster—which she won an Oscar for.
Before she played the ass kicking Amazon, Gal Gadot couldn’t do a single pull-up. During her nine months training for the role, she packed on seventeen pounds of muscle. Needless to say, she can churn out those pull-ups now.
For her role as a deranged, mentally unstable ballerina, Portman spent almost eight hours a day rehearsing her dancing scenes. She also went on a diet of carrots and almonds, causing her to lose 20 pounds. Her dramatic change didn’t come without a price. She suffered a dislocated rib and countless bruises for her work.
For her role as the first female US Navy SEAL, Moore underwent quite a metamorphosis. She shaved her head and trained with actual Navy SEALS. She also did all her own stunts, including legit one-arm pushups.
First of all, Rooney Mara is criminally underrated. She’s incredibly talented and I can’t wait to see what she does next. Now, with that out of the way, for her role in TGWTDT, Mara shaved her head, bleached her eyebrows and got multiple piercings. Yeah, those weren’t make-up. If you’ve never seen the movie(s), it’s definitely worth a watch.
Speaking of criminally underrated, Edge of Tomorrow is a fucking awesome flick for many reasons, not the least of which is Blunt’s sexy badassery. For the role, she spent three months undergoing intense weight training and gymnastics. During her training, she wore weight vests to prepare herself for the 85-pound suit worn during filming. Proof that strong is sexy.
Swank portrays a champion boxer in this heartbreaking Clint Eastwood film. In order to portray the character as accurately as possible, Swank gained almost 20lbs of muscle while pushing through intense workouts and diets. She boxed two to three hours a day, six days a week with an additional 1-2 hours of weight training.
If you’ve seen the Terminator films, you know all about the guns. No, I’m not talking about firearms, I’m talking about Hamilton’s arms. She’s absolutely ripped. Many people cite Hamilton in T2 as the first physically strong woman to steal a movie. Between her roles in the first two films, she lost 12 pounds of body fat.
Much has been made about Zellweger’s appearance and whether she has had work done. That’s another post, though. For her role in Bridget Jones’ Diary, Zellwegger put on between 20 and 30 pounds, TWICE. Perhaps even more impressive is that between those two films, she became a brick-shit-house practicing and performing the dancing numbers for the musical, Chicago.
For her role of the Bride in Quentin Tarantino’s action flick Kill Bill, Thurman spent three months enduring a grueling training schedule that would see her body weight decrease by over 30lbs. Even more impressive when you consider she’d just given birth three months before she started her training.
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