With a near 30-year career filled with memorable roles and a slew of prestigious awards, Natalie Portman is one Hollywood actor who can take on any character and command the big screen. 

From her Oscar-winning turn as a ballerina in Black Swan to her role as the iconic first lady Jackie Kennedy in Jackie, Portman’s performances defy your expectations – but they always leave a lasting impression.

This week, Portman is set to captivate audiences once more when she reprises her role as the genius astrophysicist Jane Foster in Marvel’s new blockbuster Thor: Love And Thunder. This time around, however, she gets to play a very different version of her character when she wields the mystical hammer Mjolnir and becomes The Mighty Thor.

In a new interview with Variety, Portman, who portrayed Jane Foster in 2011’s Thor and 2013’s Thor: The Dark World, opened up about how she was asked for the first time in her career to add muscle to her frame – a stark change from her performance in Black Swan, which required her to become a waif-like ballet dancer.

“On Black Swan, I was asked to get as small as possible,” Portman began. “Here, I was asked to get as big as possible. That’s an amazing challenge – and also state of mind as a woman.”

In order to gain the brawn of the mighty Goddess of Thunder, Portman embarked on an intensive training regime. Beginning in the fall of 2020, the actor worked with a trainer for 10 months before and during filming to build a physique that mirrored the muscles in the comic book upon which the movie is based.

According to Portman, the experience of transforming her body into superhero shape not only yielded physical changes, but it also brought some fascinating insights about how she moved through the world, too. 

“To have this reaction and be seen as big, you realise, ‘Oh, this must be so different, to walk through the world like this,’” she continued. 

“When you’re small – and also, I think, because I started as a kid – a lot of times I feel young or little or, like, a pat-on-the-head kind of person. And I present myself that way, too, because of that.”

Portman also revealed that the crew had to build a special ramp to make her the proper height of her character, as Jane’s Mighty Thor stands at six feet tall – a whole 10 inches taller than Portman’s actual height.

“We’d rehearse the scene, they’d see the path, and then they’d build a path that was like one foot off the ground or whatever, and I would just walk on that,” she explained, referring to the ramp that allowed her to stand eye-to-eye with costar Chris Hemsworth. 

One thing’s for sure: this new Goddess of Thunder is definitely a force to be reckoned with.

Images: Getty