Top 10 Actresses Who Were Pregnant While Filming

Making a horror movie can be intense for any actor. This didn’t deter Blake Lively, who did reshoots while apparently pregnant with her second child. In this film, Blake’s character faces off against a great white shark, and most of the stunts are her own. This includes a scene where her character breaks her nose, causing the star to bleed for real. For more difficult scenes, a stunt double took her place during the last two weeks of filming. But a bun in the oven didn’t stop this beauty from kicking shark butt!

Teaching unruly students is a demanding role in itself, but it can be even more challenging when you’re pregnant. When Michelle Pfeiffer started filming this high school drama, she was just three months along, but by the end of production, she was well into her second trimester. The crew had to get creative in hiding her bump, which included filming her from different angles or having her wear loose sweaters and jackets when she was further along. No small feat, which puts this teacher at the top of her class!

This mother of three was pregnant with her youngest child while filming this sci-fi flick. Since she was five months along, Kate was often shown wearing dark clothes and holding objects in front of her bump, such as a tablet or folder. A stunt double stood in for Kate’s more intense scenes, but as we know from her role in “Titanic,” Kate won’t shy away from doing her own stunts. After giving birth to her son Bear Blaze, she returned to work, ready for reshoots. Kate admits that filming with child wasn’t easy, but she has proven that she’s unstoppable!

In this heartwrenching thriller, the real-life mom of six plays a mother looking for her missing son. Coincidentally, Angelina was pregnant with her twins Knox and Vivienne during the time of filming. Angelina actually found out during mid-production, but she wasn’t showing yet and hid it from the cast and crew until filming wrapped up. Angelina has said that she actually thinks her role on the film helped her to conceive. Her emotional performance got her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress so if anything, being pregnant only helped!

This actress was pregnant while filming both “Into the Woods” and “The Girl on the Train.” In “Into the Woods,” Emily plays the Baker’s Wife, ironically a woman who is desperate for a child. So the costume department definitely had quite the challenge on set! Then two years later, Emily hid her pregnancy from the cast and crew early on in the production of “The Girl on the Train”. Once she started showing, however, they managed to work around it. Emily has said that her mood swings helped her get into character, since Rachel is a mentally unstable alcoholic. Pregnancy has its ups and downs, but this mom worked them to her advantage.

In this thriller, Jodie Foster plays a tough-as-nails mom protecting herself and her daughter from home invaders. In real life, Jodie was pregnant with her second child. Unlike the other movies on this list, Jodie’s pregnancy clashed with an already hectic production. Nicole Kidman dropped out as the lead, so the mom-to-be had just nine days to prepare for the part. Even so, the crew managed to film around her pregnancy and hid it behind baggy sweaters. After Jodie gave birth, she came back for some reshoots. The end result? Jodie knocks it out of the park, bump or no bump.

In this sci-fi dark comedy, Anne Hathaway plays a struggling alcoholic and a writer. With a baby on the way, director Nacho Vigalondo thought the actress would have dropped out. But even well into her pregnancy, Anne jumped at the chance to start filming. And in the end, her real-life bloating ended up working well with the character. She even managed to film some fight scenes! They did have to be shot in a different way than you typically would in order to keep the actress’ heart rate down, but the end result is undetectable. We’d say the first-time mom’s performance was a colossal success.

In this classic musical, Catherine Zeta-Jones plays femme fatale showgirl Velma Kelly. In real life, Catherine was allegedly a few months pregnant while filming some of her song and dance routines. For scenes where her bump would have been more visible, she was filmed from certain angles to hide it, or was even replaced with a body double. Otherwise, Catherine did all of her dance scenes herself, and her performance earned her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. For this mom-to-be, filming was all that jazz!

She plays one of Marvel’s most popular heroines, and she once did it with a baby on the way! “Age of Ultron” marks Scarlett’s fourth time as Black Widow. So when she found out she was pregnant, recasting her was definitely not an option. Instead, most of her scenes were filmed before she became visibly pregnant. Later on in the production, stunt and body doubles filled in for her, and where necessray, Johansson’s belly was covered up with CGI. Through the miracle of motherhood and the magic of post-production, Black Widow keeps on killing it.



Before we get to our number one pick, here are some honorable mentions:



Helena Bonham Carter

“Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” (2007)


Isla Fisher

“Burke and Hare” (2010)

As if playing an Amazonian superhero wasn’t impressive enough, this actress did it well into her pregnancy. However it wasn’t during principal photography, but rather by the time they had to do reshoots that it known that she was five months pregnant. Rather than just hide her bump, the crew came up with an ingenious solution. For some of Wonder Woman’s fight scenes, Gal wore a green cloth over her stomach, which was then edited in post-production. She even filmed some scenes in the cold, which makes this mom-to-be a real trooper. A strong woman on and off-screen, Gal proves that pregnancy isn’t just beautiful – it’s badass.