Oscar winner Natalie Portman is no stranger to pushing her body to extremes for her film roles.
She famously lost 20lb while training to play a ballet dancer in Black Swan. But now the star has revealed she downed protein shakes and underwent gruelling sessions in the gym to beef up for her role in Marvel film, Thor: Love and Thunder.
The 41-year-old has appeared in two previous Thor films as Jane Foster – the love interest of the title character, played by Chris Hemsworth.
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But in the new film, due out next month, scientist Jane becomes Thor, Goddess of Thunder. It meant Natalie, who won the best actress gong for Black Swan in 2011, had to get super-fit for the action scenes.
“It’s exciting to be a superhero, and there’s no guidebook that comes along and tells you how to do it,” she said.
“I trained for a long time before and during, and I was doing the whole protein shakes [thing].
“We had incredible stunt doubles who did the really hard stuff, but there’s still a great deal of running and jumping and sword and hammer fighting. It was definitely helpful to be strong.”
Israeli-born Natalie, shot to fame in 1994 at the age of 13, when she starred opposite Jean Reno in Luc Besson’s thriller Leon.
She went on to play Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars franchise and has also been nominated for Oscars for her roles in Closer in 2004 and Jackie in 2016.
Natalie started training for the Thor role during lockdown and says it was hard to motivate herself.
On The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in 2020, she said: “I’ve had months of the pandemic, eating baked goods and laying in bed and feeling sorry for myself. I’m, like, super tired after working out. And during. And dreading before.”
Thor director Taika Waititi told how he wanted to make a more “exciting version” of Natalie’s character for the new film.
He said: “I had to talk to her about the fact I wanted to change that character and give her more licence to be adventurous and funny.”
