Natalie Portman in Black Swan. Portman endured a extreme dieting and exercise regime to embody the role.
BY RACHEL HAAS
“Lights, Camera, Action!” When cameras are rolling brilliant actors/actresses become so engaged in scenes that not even physical pain will halt them from staying in character. To embody a character, actors routinely give their give body and soul, sometimes literally. When a huge opportunity for a five-star role comes along, taking your job to the extreme is par for the course.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s on-set injury during the filming of Django Unchained turned into one of the most intense scenes of the film. Playing an evil slave plantation owner named Calvin Candie, DiCaprio, in the middle of heated argument, slammed his hand onto a dinning room table, accidentally breaking a piece of glass. This created quite the gash in Dicaprio’s hand. This didn’t stop him however, as he continued the scene with his hand cut open, using the injury as a prop. His bloody accidental performance ended up making it’s way onto the big screen, showing just how true his bond was to the character of Calvin Candie.
With all the current controversy over extreme weight loss and anorexia in the acting world, Natalie Portman still dropped twenty pounds in the 2010 psychological thriller Black Swan. Her leading role as a ballerina with a severe case of schizophrenia required her to be thinner than a toothpick. Her vegetarian diet was already slimming, but to lose the weight, she took on significantly smaller portions and eight hours of excessive cross- fit exercise a day. It took months for Portman to lose the weight, and of course, only days to gain it back. To prepare herself mentally and physically, her new, extra-lean body shape helped her develop an amazing character. Portman wound up winning an Oscar for Best Actress, making the challenge 100% worth it.
The struggle to live up to the world famous 1989 Batman movie caused an incredible actor too much stress. Jack Nicholson’s iconic portrayal of the “Joker” was re-envisioned in the 2008 remake The Dark Knight by Heath Ledger. When Ledger got the role, Nicholson gave him a call warning Ledger to be “careful.” Playing “The Joker” tends to overcome your life and it causes the darkness of its character to become you, even when you’re not acting. Just because Ledger was finished filming The Dark Knight, doesn’t mean he finished with being “The Joker.” Sadly on January 22, 2008 Heath Ledger died by accidentally taking a toxic combination of prescription pills. His death led fans to believe that he was haunted by his work filming The Dark Knight. After his passing, Ledger won five Best Supporting Actor awards for the role from The Academy Awards, Golden Globes, Australian Film Institute, Los Angles Critics Association, and BAFTA’s.
Speaking of Batman, the star of the recent trilogy, Christian Bale also went “method actor” when he played a starring role in The Machinist. Bale dropped 62 pounds to play a chronic insomniac. Bale admits to using starvation, vitamins, and a whole lot of gym time to make sure he weighed the bare minimum. Years later, he played the buff bodied Batman in The Dark Knight, and shortly after he had to scale back down to “paper thin” for his role in The Fighter, playing a former boxer Dicky Eklund, who came with the body of a drug addict.
This career path is definitely not for people who aren’t comfortable in changing their self- image. From weight loss, to hair loss, to physical pain, becoming another person requires serious alterations of your body. Going to extremes makes you so much more in tune with your character in the acting world, and a giving a little extra can be the deciding factor in winning an award. As a result of their pure dedication, these actors and actresses deliver breathtaking performances that audiences appreciate immensely. In the end, succeeding in the process makes the struggle all the more rewarding.
