10 Crazy Skills Actors Had to Learn for Movie Roles

acting by its very definition involves performing a fictional role and performing a fictional role and pretending to be somebody else an actor has to project that characters traits which range from their speech and intelligence to their body language and skills the latter of those traits the skills can often be difficult to convey which is why in a lot of cases actors actually have to learn new skills to convincingly become another person on-screen in this video we'll take a look at just some of the skills that actors have had to become proficient at in order to portray certain characters on the big screen here are ten crazy skills actors had to learn four movie roles Olivia Mott sword skills for x-men apocalypse the very beautiful Olivia Munn played the mutant psylocke one of apocalypses four recruits and a skilled user of a sword in 2016 x-men apocalypse to prepare for that role Munn endured six hours of daily sword fighting training and she became incredibly skilled in the art of wielding a blade she showed off her impressive skills in an Instagram video alongside Ryan Reynolds who played Deadpool in the Merc with a mouth titular movie which was also released in 2016 although Reynolds also trained with a sword for that role he was no match for mine in the video as his sword was made of balloons Channing Tatum tap-dancing for Hail Caesar if you've seen step up in Magic Mike you'll probably understand why the Coen brothers assumed that Channing Tatum could tap-dance when they cast him in 2016 s Hail Caesar they were wrong to do so however and Tatum spent months preparing for his role as actor and dancer Bert gurney in the movie about that preparation Tatum said I spent about three months preparing it's the most I've ever prepped for a six-minute section in a movie we went over Christmas and New Year's so I had all that time to let it gestate I let it sink into my bones over the holiday break and I'm nervous about something I drill it to a point that is probably unhealthy but as long as it works even halfway I'm happy at the end of the torturous deck Natalie Portman ballet for Black Swan Natalie Portman played the ballet dancer Nina Sayers in the brilliant 2010 psychological thriller Black Swan and the american-israeli star actually learned ballet for the role she trained for at least five hours each day whilst working on other projects at the same time Portman told the New York Times it was a rude awakening to get there and to be like I don't know what I'm doing if I had known how not close to ready I was I never would have tried it I'm glad I was a little ignorant / arrogant the training definitely paid off however the actress won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the film Robert Downey jr. the violin for Chaplin long before Robert Downey jr. was Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe the actor played an equally iconic figure for the real world that being English comic actor Charlie Chaplin in 1992 s Chaplin and he had to learn a very interesting skill for the role to accurately portray the actor Downey jr. learned to play the violin as well as a little bit of tennis incidentally and he had to do so left hand his performance in the role earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor but he was ultimately and unfortunately beaten by Al Pacino for his performance in Scent of a Woman Joseph gordon-levitt tightrope walking for the walk in 2015 Joseph gordon-levitt portrayed real-life daredevil Philippe Petit in the walk a movie about Patti's tightrope walk between the Twin Towers in New York City gordon-levitt actually worked with petit to learn tightrope walking for the role a challenge he enjoyed and benefited greatly from gordon-levitt told Entertainment Weekly he's such an optimist Philippe he's such a positive thinker and when someone believes that you can do something then you yourself believe you can do it and that's when you can actually do it when you believe in yourself the actor still struggled a little with the hype however Jennifer Lawrence chopping wood and skinning squirrels for Winter's Bone Jennifer Lawrence is currently the hottest actress in Hollywood and she has her breakout role in Winter's Bone to thank for her rise to the top the 2010 drama saw Lawrence playing read dolly a teenage girl who looked after her whole family in rural America while teaching them basic survival skills like hunting and cooking for the role Lawrence learned how to chop wood and how to skin a squirrel if you haven't seen the scene in which she does the ladder we don't recommend it it's really not very pleasant on the eyes jesse eisenberg magic tricks for now you see me in 2013's heist thriller now you see me Jesse Eisenberg played Danny atlest aka the love atlas was an arrogant illusionist and street magician and a member of the magic group known as the four horsemen and Eisenberg actually learned some magic and sleight of hand tricks for the move about what he had learned Eisenberg said I'm better than I was before the movie started but not good enough to do them in public my character has been practicing since he was 8 years old so he's been working on the same tricks every single day eight hours a day to get as good as my character is I would have to start 20 years ago Adrien Brody the piano for the pianist given the plot and indeed the title of 2002's the pianist it should come as no surprise to learn at the movie star Adrien Brody had to learn play the piano for his role in the movie as polish pianist and classful composer Vladislav Spielman what might be surprising is the extent he went to learn it Brodie went fully method for the role telling BBC I gave up my apartment I sold my car I disconnected the phones and I left I took two bags and my keyboard and moved to Europe his efforts certainly paid off as he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance Daniel day-lewis tracking hunting and skinning animals for the last of the meheecans Daniel day-lewis is of course known for his method acting it's the main reason he's won three Best Actor Oscars after all but the English Irish star went above and beyond to perfect his performance for the 1992 adventure drama masterpiece the last of the mohicans day-lewis actually lived outdoors and survivalist as an extreme form of preparation to play that then you'll Pope aka Hawkeye the white adopted son of the last chief of the Mohawk and tribe in the movie the actor picked up a very useful skill in the process as well he learned how to hunt his own food margot robbie holding her breath for five minutes for Suicide Squad there's a scene in 2016 Suicide Squad in which the Joker's purple Lamborghini ends up in some water with him and Harley Quinn still inside he escapes but Harley is left half way through the windshield sprawled across the bonnet and Batman has to swim to the bottom of the water to rescue her the scene only required actress Margot Robbie to be under water for one minute but she trained herself to hold her breath for five telling Jimmy Fallon it's all about lowering your metabolic rate you're kind of like meditate under water it's what free divers do but it's amazing I got to five minutes and I was like you know what this is above and beyond what I thought I'd get to I'm good I'm good with five thanks for watching our video about ten crazy skills actors had to learn four movie roles did you enjoy the video which other skills you know that actors were taught for their movie roles have you say in the comments section below and be sure to subscribe to our channel for more great videos like this one you

Channel: Screen Rant

Views: 10,402,599

Rating: 4.8839116 out of 5

Keywords: Olivia Munn, Margot Robbie

Id: 7DYsA0ONq3I

Length: 6min 13sec (373 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 30 2016