Actresses Who Got Ripped For A Role

Acting isn't as easy of a job as a lot of people might think. This is especially true when a role requires an intense physical training regimen that pushes an actor's body to its limits and beyond. And while it's easy to assume that it's mostly the men who have pack on the muscle to play tough characters, plenty of actresses have had to work extremely hard to get into the shape that is required to inhabit the characters they are portraying. 

Obviously, the most common type of role that an actress will get ripped for these days is to play a superhero, and there are several of those in this feature. But we didn't want to limit the scope of this topic to just Marvel, DC, and the like. Whether they brought iconic video game characters to life, entered the boxing ring, went on a journey of violent revenge, or did battle in a galaxy far, far away, these women weren't afraid to put in the work — and it shows in every frame of the movies and TV shows in which they starred. 

Not counting the models who portrayed her in advertisements and at trade shows, video game icon Lara Croft was first truly brought to life by Angelina Jolie for 2001's "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider." Jolie played Lara two years later in one more movie, the obnoxiously titled "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider — The Cradle of Life," before the "Tomb Raider" film franchise was buried for the next 15 years. When Lara finally returned to the big screen in 2018 for the simply-titled "Tomb Raider," the role of the legendary spelunker was now played by Alicia Vikander — despite an impressive list of names who were almost cast in the role. 

She definitely had other action-heavy roles before that, but this was the first time that Vikander landed the main lead of a major action/adventure film. In preparing to play one of the toughest and most athletic video game characters of all time — and one whose body is constantly put through the wringer — Vikander added 12 pounds of muscle to her frame, did mixed martial arts training, and had to eat up to five meals a day. But she already had a leg up in terms of extreme physical discipline, as Vikander had previously been a trained ballet dancer. 

Though there are plenty of female superheroes who deserve their own movie, the Marvel Cinematic Universe finally got its first one by way of 2019's "Captain Marvel." One of the most powerful characters in the MCU thus far, much of Captain Marvel's might comes from her cosmic abilities — but that's not to say she can't scrap when she needs to. And Brie Larson put in the work to make sure that Carol Danvers looked like a scrapper.

Larson admitted that she definitely had a serious case of imposter syndrome when she first got cast. "Oh my gosh, Marvel doesn't know that I don't even know how to walk up a hill without being out of breath," she told Business Insider regarding her anxiety over being chosen for the part. But she took it seriously, and said she "went far beyond what [she] ever believed was possible for [her] body." Larson says she was eventually able to deadlift 200 pounds, hip thrust 400 pounds, and could push a Jeep by herself. Since then, she has continued to hit every workout milestone that she has set for herself, including being able to do easily do one-armed pull-ups and push-ups with each arm. 

To say that "Star Wars" fandom has a complicated relationship with the sequel trilogy would be an understatement. Well, to say they have a complicated relationship with pretty much anything "Star Wars" outside of the original trilogy — and the original version of the original trilogy, to be even more specific — would be an understatement as well. But that shouldn't take away from the very hard work that was done by many talented people in making those three divisive "Star Wars" films, and that definitely includes star Daisy Ridley.

Ridley was still pretty early in her acting career when she joined the cast of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" as Rey, an orphan from desert planet Jakku whose controversial lineage connects her to none other than Emperor Palpatine. By the third sequel trilogy film, "The Rise of Skywalker," Rey had become the first female main protagonist of a live-action "Star Wars" movie. As for Ridley herself, she was already grinding like the lead of a massive franchise movie even before her official debut as Rey. Her preparations for "The Force Awakens" included three months of five hours a day, five days a week workouts and fight training. It's no wonder Rey eventually felt emboldened to christen herself as a Skywalker. 

Quentin Tarantino's love of 1970s cinema was bound to include the golden era of martial arts movies sooner or later. And when he finally got there with "Kill Bill," he went so all-on in the revenge epic that it had to be split into two parts — with "Kill Bill Vol. 2" technically being the only direct sequel Tarantino has made in his entire career. And with all due respect to the efforts of the entire cast of those movies, not to mention the dozens upon dozens of stunt performers, Uma Thurman's powerhouse performance as Beatrix "The Bride" Kiddo is what made those films truly shine.

To transform into The Bride, Thurman had the opportunity to train under legendary filmmaker and fight choreographer Yuen Woo-ping — who went from working with Jackie Chan back in the 1970s to helping revitalize martial arts movies in the 2000s with his work on "The Matrix" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." For "Kill Bill," he put Thurman on 40 hours a week of training for three months to turn her into someone who could convincingly take on an army of 88 henchmen entirely on her own. As she told IGN in 2003, "It was very empowering to make it out alive from The House of Blue Leaves with my joints semi-intact."

It's not only for the movies that actresses transform their bodies in order to play badasses. Alison Brie, who at that point was best known as nervous bookworm Annie on "Community" and trophy wife Trudy on "Mad Men," proved that she could be so much more when she got cast as the lead in Netflix's "GLOW." Telling a fictionalized story based on the real-life Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling promotion that launched in 1986, Brie played Ruth "Zoya the Destroyer" Wild, a character inspired by real GLOW wrestler Lorilyn "Ninotchka" Palmer. 

Brie admitted to ET Online, "I have never considered myself an athletic person until I started working on 'GLOW.'" But she said the show didn't use stunt doubles, and that her and her fellow actresses really did all the things you saw on the screen. As a result, before each of the show's three seasons, the cast had to do a month of wrestling training to get ready. Brie's personal trainer, Jason Walsh, pointed out to Self, "She's a tiny woman, not an athlete that's been doing this stuff her whole life. So we trained her like an athlete." 

That training paid off, with Brie eventually able to do push-ups with 50 pounds of weight on her back, as well as pick up the full weight of other people and hold them over her head — an obviously essential skill for a wrestler.

It's not often that the spin-off movie is better than the movie it was spun off from, but few would disagree that this was the case with "Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)." Easily the best part of the disappointing 2016 "Suicide Squad" movie, Margot Robbie's take on Harley Quinn deserved much better, and she got it with "Birds of Prey," still one of the best-reviewed DC Extended Universe movies. Much of that has to do with Robbie and her captivating take on one of DC's most popular characters that isn't a man of steel, a caped crusader, or a princess of Themyscira.

In addition to doing such an amazing job at embodying Harley's personality, Robbie also didn't shy away from bringing the character's physically tough side to the screen as well. She had already worked with ballet dancer and celebrity trainer Andie Hecker to get into fighting form — and also to make sure certain parts of her body held up to the scrutiny of lingering camera close-ups — for "Suicide Squad." But she had a lot more camera time for "Birds of Prey," so Robbie really had to double down on the workouts, diets, and overall discipline — and that's to say nothing of the fact that she clearly put in some serious time learning to roller-skate for her title role. 

Given her scene-stealing performances in movies like "The Greatest Showman" and both installments of Denis Villeneuve's "Dune" adaptation, it's easy to forget that Rebecca Ferguson's big breakout role came by way of the fifth "Mission: Impossible" film, "Rogue Nation." Playing M16 agent Ilsa Faust who — as is typical for that series — switches back and forth between hero and villain seemingly from one scene to the next, Ferguson held her own among an ever-growing and already-impressive ensemble, not just in terms of character work but also fights and stunts.

Speaking to Vogue about her first "Mission: Impossible" outing, Ferguson said the training started immediately. "When I first arrived, they drove me straight from the airport to the gym," she explained, adding, "For the next month and half, I trained for six hours, five or six days a week." The actress also said she did most of her own stunts in the movie, and had to do some of the more dangerous ones — including a 120-foot fall — over and over again so that they could be shot from as many angles as possible. But Ferguson came back for two more "Mission: Impossible" films after "Rogue Nation," so it must not have been all bad. 

There was a time when TV productions couldn't hold a candle to Hollywood in terms of action set pieces, fights, stunts, and the like. Over the last few decades, that line has gotten much thinner — and much of that is due to HBO's "Game of Thrones." Based on the popular book series by George R. R. Martin, "Game of Thrones" had all of the budget and spectacle of even the most epic big screen production — and for the actors who worked on the show, it also felt every bit as physically demanding.

Brienne of Tarth was described as an extremely imposing figure, and comprising on that wasn't an option for the screen adaptation. A "Game of Thrones" fan site immediately took to namechecking which actors should be cast in which roles shortly after the series was announced, and Gwendoline Christie was brought up as the perfect person to play Brienne. In fact, that led to someone contacting her agent and bringing the role to her attention, and she started training immediately — before the audition was even officially lined up.

Christie already had the height for it at 6-foot-3-inches, but she had to work hard to give herself the menacing build to match. It clearly paid off, as it's impossible to imagine anyone else bringing Brienne to life. 

Though Hilary Swank's first major film role already had her performing martial arts as "The Next Karate Kid," she still had to do some serious work to be able to play tragic boxer Maggie Fitzgerald a decade later in Clint Eastwood's sports drama masterpiece "Million Dollar Baby." In fact, Swank trained so hard that at one point she could have died while preparing for the role when an untreated foot blister eventually developed into a potentially fatal staph infection.

If that wasn't proof that Swank was all-in on becoming Maggie, her workout routine certainly was. For six days a week for three months, Swank did over two hours of just boxing training, and then another one to two hours of weights. Though she was only asked to add 10 pounds of muscle, Swank nearly doubled that through not only her workouts but via a very strict diet regimen. As for the actual boxing practice, Swank overachieved on that front, too. Her weight trainer, Grant Roberts, told the Los Angeles Times, "Honestly, I don't know how she was standing up, with all that boxing."

Just because the "Deadpool" movies are largely comedies, that doesn't mean there isn't plenty of action to be found. It also doesn't mean that the casts of those movies are only training their funny bones in preparation for their roles. This is doubly true for those members of the cast that weren't in a head-to-toe costume or entirely CG (looking at you, Colossus). As luck-powered superhero Domino in "Deadpool 2," Zazie Beetz didn't have either of those things to fall back on, and had to look the part with an outfit that kept her shoulders and parts of her neck, chest, and arms exposed.

Not only did Beetz have to endure two months of training before filming for the anti-hero sequel even began, but she also had to squeeze in four hours per day even when production got underway. It was a big change for Beetz to go from — by her own admission — not working out at all to having an intense daily workout routine. As she told The Hollywood Reporter, "It was a huge transition emotionally and physically ... just something I hadn't felt before. [I'd] never really brought myself that far." While Beetz doesn't appear in "Deadpool and Wolverine," she could always reprise the role of Domino if Marvel Studios ever makes a future X-Force-related film. 

It's not always fighting or big elaborate action set pieces that require an actress to do intense physical training for a role. In the case of 2002's "Blue Crush," it was mostly a matter of actress Kate Bosworth having the so-called beach body needed to play a surfer girl that was going to spend the bulk of the film in a bikini. But while actresses getting into bathing suit shape isn't especially unusual for Hollywood, in the case of Bosworth and "Blue Crush," it's worth highlighting because of the way it ended up changing people's perception of women's role in the sport of surfing.

To be clear, Bosworth definitely worked very hard on that movie. She reportedly spent upwards of seven hours a day cross-training, in what she calls the most physically demanding experience of her life. But "Blue Crush," and Bosworth's work — and physique — in the movie in particular, are said to have represented a sea change for women in the surfing culture, inspiring a generation of girls and women to get on a board and take up the sport themselves rather than just chill on the beach and watch the boys ride the waves. 

Two years before "Captain Marvel" hit theaters, the DC Extended Universe had already put a female superhero front and center for 2017's "Wonder Woman." Still the DCEU film with the highest Rotten Tomatoes score (an impressive 93%), "Wonder Woman" seemed to suggest that the DCEU had what it took to go head-to-head with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Of course, that didn't end up panning out — but that's not the fault of this movie, nor of star Gal Gadot, who was almost frighteningly perfect in the titular role.

Gadot said she spent a whopping six months preparing for her first solo outing as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman, which included not only exercise and strength training but also stunt choreography. Of course, it has to be mentioned that before Gadot became an actress, she spent two years as a member of the Israel Defense Forces, where she was a combat fitness instructor. So it isn't as if she was starting from zero on her strength and fitness journey for "Wonder Woman." Still, she worked and trained hard specifically to play Diana in the character's multiple film appearances, and it showed onscreen, since Gadot had much less costume to hide behind than most of her male superhero counterparts.