Top 10 Times Celebrities Learned a Language for a Role
#10: Helena Zengel (Kiowa)
“News of the World” (2020)
It’s always a tall order to act opposite Tom Hanks. Helena Zengel did so at just eleven years old…and with a new arsenal of words under her belt. For her role as Johanna Leonberger in “News of the World”, the German actress learned the native language of the Oklahoman Kiowa people. Zengel studied exhaustively with a tribe elder in order to deliver lines that were written almost entirely in tribal speech. She also gained knowledge of the people’s physical mannerisms and culture, along with a heartwarming friendship with her teacher. Paul Greengrass’s western received multiple accolades, including a Golden Globe nom for Zengel’s performance. She’s also acquired an invaluable piece of history, as living persons who are fluent in Kiowa are an extreme rarity.
#9: Timothée Chalamet (Italian)
“Call Me by Your Name” (2017)
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If you’re going to parley with Chalamet, it might help if you’re a touch bilingual. The heartthrob sensation was already a French speaker before he took the role of Elio in “Call Me by Your Name”. While filming on location for Luca Guadagnino’s drama, Chalamet immersed himself in the country and his character by learning piano, guitar and Italian. Though français is no easy language to conquer, the lingually experienced actor still struggled with the syntax of Bel Paese. He heavily anatomized the phrases, paying attention to grammar, conjugations and composition. The Academy graced Chalamet with a Best Actor nomination for his efforts. And we have to admit, listening to Italian roll off his tongue is pretty easy on the ears.
#8: Uma Thurman (Japanese)
“Kill Bill: Volume 1” (2003) & “Kill Bill: Volume 2” (2004)
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Much like Quentin Tarantino needed Christoph Waltz for “Inglourious Basterds”, he never could have made “Kill Bill” without Uma Thurman. But embodying “The Bride” was even more challenging than finding the right wedding dress. Besides extensive martial arts and combat training, Thurman added Japanese to her roster of talents. Even before exercising her body, she was working out her mind through sessions with a Japanese instructor. She even had to deliver some dialogue in a medieval samurai speech…sort of like Old English for the Eastern hemisphere. Her ability to do so helps give the onscreen persona a level of authenticity that’s worthy of Hattori Hanzō.
#7: Penélope Cruz (English)
“The Hi-Lo Country” (1998)
Being one of the most widely spoken languages, English is often a requirement to pass “Hollywood Stardom 101”. In the case of Spanish thespian Penélope Cruz, it was the screenplays that did the teaching. The young Spaniard got through early auditions with only simple phrases like “thank you” and “how are you.” For her first American film, the 1998 western “The Hi-Lo Country”, she began sounding out her non-native lines. Phonetic memorization eventually translated into textual understanding, and through this process she became an English speaker. She earned an ALMA Awards “Best Actress” nomination, despite delivering some dialogue that she did not fully comprehend. Cruz’s career has been explosive in both tongues, and it’s up to you to decide which one she can deliver sexier.
#6: Leonardo DiCaprio (Arikara & Pawnee)
“The Revenant” (2015)
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What would you do for an Oscar? For Leo DiCaprio, that answer includes getting inside dead animal bodies, eating actual bison liver, and learning Native American vernacular. The cast of Alejandro Iñárritu’s “The Revenant”, including both DiCaprio and Tom Hardy, collaborated meticulously with scholars of the indigenous Arikara and Pawnee languages. Leo displayed great natural talent for mimicking the sounds and speech patterns of the dialect, and he greatly served Iñárritu’s pursuit for cultural accuracy. His diligence not only earned the golden statue, but it helped present a scarcely precise and optimistic voice of a historically significant nation.
#5: Robert De Niro (Sicilian)
“The Godfather Part II” (1974)
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Robert De Niro resonates Hollywood’s visage of the Italian mob so well that those names are practically interchangeable. So it’s surprising to learn that De Niro didn’t grow up studying the Italian dictionary. It wasn’t until he became young Vito Corleone in “The Godfather Part II” that he adopted colloquial Sicilian. In fact, he spent four months on Sicilian soil to help train his ear and observe the Don’s motherland. De Niro’s contribution to “The Godfather” legacy is a crowning Academy Award-winning achievement, certainly helped by his commitment to these origins. He once described Sicilians as having a way of “watching without watching.” We hope when they watch him in “Part II” that they are proud.
#4: The Whole Cast (American Sign Language)
“A Quiet Place” (2018)
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Communication can be just as beautiful even if it’s not spoken out loud. Even before the recent nominations and accolades for “CODA”, a little horror film called “A Quiet Place” had heavy appreciation for the art of sign. In a world amassed with acutely sound-sensitive aliens, knowing American sign language puts you ahead of the evolutionary curve. Director/star John Krasinski insisted on casting a deaf actress for the role, and with Millicent Simmonds booking the part of his daughter, he ensured that all cast and crew members learned ASL. Not only did this serve as a transformative acting experience, but also the collective understanding of an altered lifestyle influenced camera and editing techniques. Not only did this immersion elevate the movie’s intensity, but it respectfully saluted the deaf community and the uniqueness of survival with heightened senses as well.
#3: Viggo Mortensen (Elvish)
“The Lord of the Rings” franchise (2001-03)
This handsome King of Men is a true Renaissance Dúnadan. He’s an actor, poet, painter (we could go on), and he can articulate several lingos. He grew up with Spanish and has appropriated French, Danish, and Arabic to his repertoire for various roles. For Aragorn in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, Mortensen confronted J.R.R. Tolkien's invented-tongue of Elvish. Tolkien’s crafted words can be as difficult as their real-world inspirations, but Viggo’s multilayered familiarity with languages helped him pick them up quickly. Listening to him, you’d believe that Elvish was just as real as English, French, or even Arabic…which he would later learn for the period drama “Far From Men”. So…which language should he sing us to sleep in?
#2: Michelle Yeoh (Mandarin & Burmese)
“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (2000) & “The Lady” (2011)
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Michelle Yeoh is just all kinds of cool. From doing her own stunt-work in action flicks to her own b*tch-work in “Crazy Rich Asians”, this artiste of many talents commands every scene she’s featured in. For Ang Lee’s operatic “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, she extended her vocabulary from English, Malay and Cantonese to Mandarin. With the help of a Mandarin-speaking crew and the patience of a disciplined warrior, she performed vocal acrobatics to phonetically piece together her lines and translations. She would later tackle Burmese in the 2011 biography “The Lady”. Not only did she dissect her dialogue’s meaning, but also its appropriate moments of exclamatory emphasis and dramatic pause. If such conscientious care and focus sounds tedious… well, just watch the phenomenal end product.
#1: Meryl Streep (German & Polish)
“Sophie’s Choice” (1982)
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Meryl Streep’s talent is legendary, and it’s partially because of her inhuman ability to disappear into her characters. It’s reasonable to think she considers the adoption of a new language just part of the job description. In this case, she learned two. To personify Zofia “Sophie” Zawistowski in “Sophie’s Choice”, she began studying Polish to make sure she got the accent right. When director Alan J. Pakula reportedly changed some of her lines to German and Polish impromptu, she secured knowledge of each to enhance veracity. Not only was this attempt for extra credit demanding, but she’s admitted that it was a monumental new way to understand her character. Streep’s dedication paid off, as “Sophie’s Choice” is widely regarded as one of her greatest acting achievements.
