Entertainment
Thor: Love and Thunder star Natalie Portman’s most drastic transformations, from V for Vendetta to Black Swan-Sabrina Barr-Entertainment – Metro
From gruelling ballet training to shaving her head.
Natalie Portman throws herself into her roles head first (Picture: Warner Bros Pictures/Fox Searchlight Pictures/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
Natalie Portman has blasted onto cinema screens as Mighty Thor in the brand new Marvel blockbuster Thor: Love and Thunder, marking her explosive, highly-anticipated return to the MCU.
The new MCU release, which is now out in cinemas in the UK, sees her return as Jane Foster opposite Chris Hemsworth’s Thor Odinson and Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie… but this time around, she’s not just in her lab exploring the ins and outs of astrophysics.
Oh no. Jane has transformed into Mighty Thor in the Taika Waititi movie, complete with even mightier guns to rival her former love interest.
It’s not the first time the Star Wars actor has undergone an intense and impressive transformation for a role, having thrown herself into parts that are gruelling in both a physical and mental capacity.
From training for months to do her best to master the art of ballet to shaving her head, it appears Natalie’s not one to do anything by halves.
From V for Vendetta to Black Swan, here are some of her most drastic transformations:
Thor: Love and Thunder
Mighty Thor has arrived (Picture: Jasin Boland/Marvel Studios)
Let’s start off with Natalie’s most recent film, Thor: Love and Thunder, in which she stars with Chris, Tessa and Christian Bale as Gorr the God Butcher.
The MCU movie sees her return as astrophysicist Jane Foster for the first time on-screen since 2013, but – lo and behold – she has transformed into the Mighty Thor, wielding a pieced-back-together Mjölnir and boasting godly powers.
The role marked the first time in her career that she was asked to bulk up, with camera trickery also making it seem as though her character was 6ft tall, far taller than her own 5ft3 frame.
The actor spent 10 months working out with the help of trainer Naomi Pendergast, the goal being to ‘develop arm and abdominal definition’, Naomi told Variety.
‘We worked on building her upper body three times a week, which included arm, back, chest exercises, boxing, skipping and running. The other two days were dedicated to injury prevention work, which included Pilates-based exercises, stretching, release work and balance exercises,’ she said.
The hard work definitely paid off!
Black Swan
Just one of the many creepy moments in the film (Picture: Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Thor: Love and Thunder wasn’t the first time Natalie had to adhere to a strict fitness regime for a role, as she also had to do so for her Oscar-winning turn as ballerina Nina Sayers in Black Swan.
To prepare for the gripping Darren Aronofsky film, the lead star would train for up to eight hours a day, six days a week doing exercises including ballet classes, swimming, cross-training and endurance exercises, former New York City Ballet dancer Mary Helen Bowers told Shape magazine.
Natalie lost a significant amount of weight for the role, emphasising the physical and mental toll her transformation had while speaking to Entertainment Weekly when she said: ‘It was the first time I understood how you could get so wrapped up in a role that it could sort of take you down.’
Stressing how much pain dancers endure in the real world, she said: ‘All dancers are always dancing with an extreme injury. Not just a sore muscle, they’re dancing on a sprained ankle or with a twisted neck or something,’ having dislocated a rib herself during rehearsals.
V for Vendetta
Yes, the shaving head scene in the film was real (Picture: Warner Bros Pictures)
One of the most poignant moments of the 2005 dystopian film V for Vendetta, starring Hugo Weaving as the titular V, was when Natalie’s character, Evey Hammond, had her head shaved.
Not only did she actually shave her head in real life, but she did it on camera for the scene – so they had to make sure they got it right the first time around.
When asked by MovieWeb in 2006 if it was ‘traumatic’ to have her head shaved, she responded: ‘I was so trying to focus, be in character; because we had one shot to do it. I don’t really have any personal memories of the experience.’
She added that having her head shaved actually made her more recognisable when she was out and about, because ‘people tend to stare just naturally’ when they see a woman with a shaved head, she remarked.
Vox Lux
Natalie looked every inch a popstar in Vox Lux (Picture: Curzon/Artificial Eye)
In Vox Lux, Natalie was able to live out her popstar fantasy, playing former music prodigy Celeste on the road to a comeback in the spotlight.
She looked worlds apart from her real-life self when portraying the character, wearing 1980s-esque metallic outfits, having her hair styled into quiffed mohawks and tattoos.
During an interview with Refinery29, the film’s head of makeup Anouck Sullivan revealed the inspiration behind Celeste’s showstopping looks.
‘Naturally, I’m really into vintage glam rock stars. My references will always innately be something along the lines of the David Bowie era. But we didn’t directly reference any specific pop stars in the film,’ Anouck said.
‘Sure, there were some in the back of my mind when devising the looks, but no one particular name was direct inspiration. We just wanted Celeste to be this futuristic individual. Celeste’s final performance look wasn’t intentionally inspired by Bowie, but it sort of ended up that way.’
Star Wars prequel films
The teenage Queen had a powerful presence (Picture: 20th Century Fox)
We can’t talk about Natalie’s on-screen transformations without discussing Star Wars, of course.
In the prequel film trilogy, which came out between 1999 and 2005, she played Padmé Amidala, going from being the Queen of Naboo as a teenager to a Senator.
Padmé’s ensembles and makeup was so ornate as Queen that when she disguised herself as one of the ruler’s servants, she managed to avoid suspicion.
The handmaiden who acted as her decoy in the first movie of the trilogy, The Phantom Menace, was played by none other than Keira Knightley, who was 12 years old at the time, while Natalie was 16.
While many people have long-said they can see an uncanny resemblance between the pair, this was made even more apparent when they were dressed as Padmé, with their own mothers admitting they found it difficult to distinguish between them both at times.
Many people are still holding out hope that Natalie will return to the Star Wars franchise, particularly as her on-screen love Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) made his return as Darth Vader in the Obi-Wan Kenobi series, opposite Ewan McGregor as the titular character.
Jackie
The film follows Jacqueline Kennedy in the days following the assassination of US President John F Kennedy (Picture: Fox Searchlight Pictures)
In 2016, Natalie took on the immense responsibility of portraying former US First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in Jackie, with her performance earning her a third Oscar nomination.
As well as wearing historically-accurate clothing and having her hair styled just as Jackie would have done, the actor also adopted global trendsetter’s accent, with Jackie having spent a lot of time in Manhattan in her life, including during her school days.
Dialogue coach Samara Bay told Vice that Natalie ‘clearly worked diligently with original clips of Jackie herself and a dialect coach to translate Jackie’s sounds into her mouth, in terms of the quality and intonations, as well as the vowel and consonant sounds’.
While attending the US premiere of the film in New York, Natalie said: ‘The voice is very particular… and the voice is different when she speaks publicly and privately.
She continued: ‘It was fun to do it for the first time. I remember at the beginning, actually, everyone was kind of [thinking], “Uh oh. What’s going on here? It’s a little over-the-top or campy.”‘
Thor: Love and Thunder is in cinemas now.
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