40 Startling Skills Actors Actually Learned For Films

Acting is all about discovery and finding the truth of a character or situation. Sometimes though, in order to fully portray that truth, actors have to learn skills they don’t already have. It makes sense because, while Hollywood trickery can be used to fool an audience, it’s a sense of authenticity that often truly sells a performance. With that in mind, here’s 40 startling skills actors learned in order to better inhabit their characters.

40. Timothée Chalamet — speaking Italian

For the role of Elio Perlman in 2017’s Call Me By Your Name Timothée Chalamet learned several new skills. As he told Newsweek, while he already spoke fluent French, he added Italian to his repertoire. He revealed, “I went to Italy about a month and a half early for the film, taking Italian lessons every day in addition to piano and guitar lessons…”. Wait, he learned instruments too?

39. Kate Winslet — holding her breath for seven minutes

For the upcoming Avatar 2, Kate Winslet learned to hold her breath for a mind-boggling seven minutes and 14 seconds. She told The Hollywood Reporter, “I had to learn how to free-dive to play that role in Avatar, and that was just incredible.” Because of the intense secrecy surrounding the project, though, she was unable to reveal any character details beyond, “Yeah, I play a water person.”

38. Tom Cruise — flying a helicopter

Few actors are as intensely dedicated to doing their own stunts as Tom Cruise, and in 2018’s Mission: Impossible — Fallout he outdid himself. In order to film the movie’s climactic helicopter battle, Cruise actually amassed 2,000 hours of flight time over the course of three months of eight-hour days. So, yes, Cruise got himself certified to fly a helicopter rather than film in front of a green screen or use a stunt pilot.

37. Uma Thurman — three styles of kung-fu

When speaking to TIME magazine in 2003 about training for her iconic role as The Bride in Kill Bill, Uma Thurman wasn’t exactly enthusiastic. She said, “Three styles of kung-fu, two styles of sword-fighting, knife throwing, knife fighting, hand-to-hand combat, Japanese speaking. It was literally absurd.” Unfortunately, the experience seemed to cause some friction between her and director Quentin Tarantino.