In an era where action flicks and superhero stories are Hollywood's bread and butter,
it's not enough for the female stars of these films to be talented and beautiful; they also
have to clock some serious hours working out.
From soldiers and spies to intergalactic assassins and psychotic ballerinas, these women put
in maximum effort before the cameras ever began rolling!
Gal Gadot
Gal Gadot already had the face to play one of the DC's most notoriously gorgeous girl
heroes when she was cast as Wonder Woman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice — but
it took some challenging work in the gym to turn her runway model-body into an Amazonian
temple of power for Wonder Woman's stand-alone flick.
"I had five months of doing horse riding and martial arts and a lot of body work."
Gadot, who was unable to do a single pullup at the start of her training, spent nine months
bulking up for the role, and gaining seventeen pounds.
She told Glamour, "It's all muscle.
I feel so much better now.
When you feel strong, it changes everything — your posture, the way you walk.
I look at photos from five years ago and think, Whoa, I was too skinny."
Scarlett Johansson
Between playing Black Widow in the Iron Man and Avengers franchises, and a cyborg assassin
in Ghost in the Shell, Scarlett Johansson has had to stay in peak physical condition
since 2010.
But for the latter, she had to know how to handle a wide variety of lethal objects, too.
Johansson described her training regimen as "a lot of repetition and then a lot of tactical
training, which I'd never done before — with room clearing and all that stuff, to just
be as efficient with the weapons as possible."
Hardcore, for sure, although it still sounds like a lot more fun than the strict weight-lifting
and diet routine she followed for Avengers, which involved, as she put it, "Workout like
a dude, eat like a rabbit."
Alison Brie
Until recently, Alison Brie was best known for playing Trudy on Mad Men — a role which
required serious acting chops, but no stunt work.
So when she landed a starring role in Netflix's GLOW (that's Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling),
she had to train like a madwoman to get into fighting shape.
Sometimes that meant intense workouts in the gym, or carrying weights across the floor,
and sometimes, it meant carrying her 220-pound trainer, Jason Walsh, around the room on her
back.
Walsh claimed his goal was to turn Brie into someone who could dish it out, and take a
hit, saying, "Alison would be jumping off ropes and landing on people and flipping.
I wanted to get her resilient so she didn't run the risk of injury."
Jennifer Lawrence
In order to play Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games franchise, Lawrence had to whip herself
into peak physical condition and acquire a slew of survival skills.
Lawrence's six-week training regimen included the usual time in the gym, for sprints and
cardio — and of course, she had to learn to hold a bow like a pro.
But when the actress was asked about her workout routine, she ticked off some unusual items,
too, "Rock climbing, tree climbing — and combat, running, and vaulting."
Hilary Swank
Few actresses have ever gotten into the kind of shape that Hilary Swank did for her Oscar-winning
role as a champion boxer in Million Dollar Baby.
For the role, Swank overhauled her entire lifestyle and adopted a tightly regimented
routine in which workouts, meals, and even sleep were all planned, down to the minute.
She said, "My training was two and a half hours of boxing and approximately an hour
and a half to two hours lifting weights every day, six days a week...I gained 19 pounds
of muscle."
Swank also described drinking ten egg whites per day and sleeping nine hours per night
— but with a midnight alarm so that she could get up and drink a protein shake in
the wee hours of the morning.
Demi Moore
For her role as a soldier in G.I.
Jane, Demi Moore famously got in such peak physical condition that she was able to do
one-armed pushups.
To nail the part, Moore trained with an actual Navy SEAL and did her own stunts, even for
the movie's most intense scenes.
She said, "I could have come in and asked to let the stuntwoman do the obstacle course,
but I felt I would have walked away having missed an opportunity experiencing, first-hand,
what these people actually go through in training; it's the whole reason for doing this film
in the first place."
Uma Thurman
In order to play Beatrix "The Bride" Kiddo in Kill Bill, Uma Thurman had to be able to
kill Bill in several dozen different ways — and at least two languages.
Thurman described the litany of skills she had to train for, listing, "Three styles of
kung fu, two styles of sword fighting, knife throwing, knife fighting, hand-to-hand combat,
Japanese speaking.
It was literally absurd."
Thurman said, of her grueling regimen with martial arts master Wu Ping, "They trained
me five days a week for three months from nine in the morning until five o'clock at
night and we were not to be late and I never got to leave early."
Linda Hamilton
While some folks were swooning over the then-awe-inspiring special effects in Terminator 2: Judgment
Day, others were far more impressed by the musclebound guns of its leading lady.
Linda Hamilton trained like a maniac for her return to the role of Sarah Connor, putting
in thirteen weeks of work before shooting even began — a regimen that saw her doing
loads of cardio, weight training, weapons training, and judo, as well as eating a very
90s-healthy diet: no fat.
​Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie doesn't just accept physically demanding roles; she seeks them out, and then
searches for ways to make them even more hardcore.
In a special feature on Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life, writer James V. Hart revealed that
Jolie came on board looking to gain new skills.
"Angelina had a list of things that she wanted to do on the film."
"She wanted to ride a horse.
She wanted to have an underwater sequence."
Seven years later, she'd do it all over again, for the title role in Salt.
Stunt instructor, Simon Crane, explained, "For her fight training, we got her learning
a combination of Muay Thai and Krav Maga very early on.
The training, at the early stages, took up about three to four sessions a week, lasting
approximately two hours each.
When we started filming, we trained during lunch breaks or on the weekends."
Zoe Saldana
Even though her actual face and body never appeared onscreen, Zoe Saldana endured a serious
training regimen for her performance as Neytiri in Avatar.
Not only did the actress need to learn archery, martial arts, and how to ride a horse bareback,
she also had to learn in Na'vi, the fictional language featured in the movie.
And the six months she spent mastering those skills were just the beginning, as she then
had to learn how to do it all, while wearing a motion capture suit and head camera.
All together, Saldana spent a whopping eighteen months preparing for the role.
Natalie Portman
Portman herself probably sums up her training regimen for Black Swan best, when she says,
"There were some nights that I thought I literally was going to die."
To prepare for her role as the star of Darren Aronofsky's thriller about a mentally unbalanced
ballerina, Portman spent a full year developing the basic ballet skills required to execute
the film's choreography — dancing for five hours a day, every day.
But once production kicked into gear, those five hours of daily dancing turned into sixteen,
which, in combination with an ultra-restrictive dancer's diet, saw Portman shed twenty pounds
from her already-thin frame.
The dedication is real
Despite Hollywood's reputation for "smoke and mirrors," there's nothing fake about the
effort these actresses put in to prepare for these physically demanding roles.
So the next time you're watching a superhero movie, or an on-screen dance-off, be sure
to take a moment to appreciate all the hard work that went into it before the cameras
ever started rolling.
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