17 Actors Who Learned Unique And Impressive Skills For A Role

Oftentimes, movies and TV shows use stunt doubles or body doubles to create scenes where a character needs to do something the actor can't. Sometimes, however, actors take the time to learn something unique for a role (even if they still have a double).

Here are 17 actors who learned unique and impressive skills for a role:

1. To prepare for her role as opera star Maria Callas in Maria, Angelina Jolie, who "had not sung in public" before, learned to sing opera. She "spent almost seven months training because when you work with Pablo [Larraín, the director], you can't do anything by half."

For a single scene in Season 1, Episode 6, he learned dog training as well.

3. For The Brothers Bloom, Rachel Weisz had two weeks to learn how to convincingly portray her character's eccentric hobbies, including violin, piano, banjo, guitar, karate, skateboarding, juggling, and riding a unicycle. However, she took more time to learn a "really complicated" card trick from an expert who was flown in from the UK.

4. For a The Pursuit of Happyness scene where his character gains entrance to an internship by showing a stockbroker his impressive Rubik's Cube skills, Will Smith learned how to solve the puzzle from World Cube Association co-founder Tyson Mao.

6. For an underwater scene in Suicide Squad, Margot Robbie did four sessions with a free diver, who taught her how to hold her breath for up to five minutes.

7. To play freediver Ronal in Avatar: The Way of Water, Kate Winslet learned to hold her breath underwater for a long time. She got up to seven minutes and 15 seconds, breaking Tom Cruise's previously held record for a person holding their breath for a movie.

8. To play the titular role in Wednesday, Jenna Ortega learned to play cello. She started her lessons about two months before filming.

9. For his role as highwire artist Philippe Petit in The Walk, Joseph Gordon-Levit learned how to walk on a highwire from Philippe himself.

10. To play katana-wielding Michonne on The Walking Dead, Danai Gurira worked with a sword trainer before shooting began. During filming, she worked swords into her normal workout routine.

11. For A Quiet Place, director/star John Krasinski and the rest of the cast learned American Sign Language.

12. To play Ruben Stone, a drummer who experiences hearing loss, in Sound of Metal, Riz Ahmed spent seven months learning ASL from coach Jeremy Lee Stone, who also taught him about the Deaf community.

He also learn to play the drums from musician Guy Licata.

Riz told Variety, "Drumming and ASL are both non-verbal means of communication. They both shared the same challenge for someone word-oriented like myself, to get past that crutch and communicate with my body. That was the challenge."

13. To play ballerina-turned-spy Dominika Egorova in Red Sparrow, Jennifer Lawrence trained in ballet for four hours a day, five days a week with "the ballet-boot-camp guy," former New York City ballet member Kurt Froman. She learned all of the choreography for her dancing scenes, even though only the top half of her body is shown onscreen.

14. For his role as playwright Jonathan Larson in Tick, Tick... Boom!, Andrew Garfield spent a year studying voice and piano. Before he was offered the role, director Lin-Manuel Miranda asked Greg Miele, his massage therapist who happens to be Andrew's good friend, if the actor could sing — and Greg lied on Andrew's behalf!

15. To play Jackson Pollock in the biopic Pollock, Ed Harris learned to action paint like the famous artist. He built a home art studio in 1994 and imitated the painter's style, pulling from Hans Namuth's 1950 recordings of him at work.

16. Before Singin' in the Rain, Debbie Reynolds had no dance training, which frustrated director/costar Gene Kelly. She only had three months to learn, so she "was dancing eight hours a day, nonstop."

17. And finally, Chadwick Boseman "truly learned to play" the trumpet for his role as Levee Green in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.