The 15 Most Drastic Movie Role Transformations By Actresses

Movie: Being John Malkovich (1999)
After There’s Something About Mary was released in 1998, Diaz took on a role that was significantly less attractive to secret admirers and stalkers. In the cult-classic, Diaz paired an unmanageable 80s-esque wig with a number of crazy cat lady like outfits to play the outlandish Lotte Schwartz.

Movie: My Week with Marilyn (2011)
While watching My Week with Marilyn, the audience might forget that it's a film from 2011 that stars Williams as the 1960s Hollywood icon. She completely loses herself in her troubled character. For the role, Williams gained weight, wore padding around her hips, studied Monroe’s films and interviews to pick up her mannerisms, and apparently kept her persona between takes.

Movie: The Iron Lady (2011)
Streep, one of the greatest actresses ever, becomes Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady —her gap-teeth and accent included. There is already talk about Streep picking up her third Best Actress Oscar for the performance, though she needed convincing before taking the role. Streep reportedly did not agree with Thatcher’s policies and, we suspect, hairstyle choice.

Movie: Blade: Trinity (2004)
In TV series 7th Heaven, Biel's Mary Camden was the athletic one, but her transition to Hollywood saw that athleticism reach a new level. She dropped about 10 pounds of fat and put on pounds of muscle through hours of weight training for Blade: Trinity.

Movie: Monster (2003)
Of course, there's Charlize Theron, but you can’t ignore Ricci’s transformation, either. She gained 10 pounds for the role and turned into the chubby, muscle T-shirt wearing, makeup-less girlfriend of serial killer, Selby.

Movie: G.I. Jane (1997)
Moore buzzed her hair off to tell the story of the first woman to undergo training with the U.S. Navy Special Warfare Group. Moore weight trained daily to prepare for the role as Lieutenant Jordan O'Neill, so much so that she was able to pull off one-arm push-ups for the film.

Movie: Black Swan (2010)
The already petite Mila Kunis dropped weight to perfect the look of the ballet dancer for her role as Lily. She reportedly lost 20 pounds in five months, putting her at only 95 pounds. The weight loss caused her to comment on the industry, saying she found it “disgusting” that, in real life, all you could see was her bones, while her body actually looked great on film. She openly stated that she thought she looked like Gollum from Lord of the Rings, but nah, skinny Mila was still cute.

Movie: Winnie (2011)
Thanks to Weight Watchers and a steady workout routine, the American Idol contestant-turned-actress dropped about 80 pounds to play the wife of Nelson Mandela in the biopic Winnie, opposite Terrence Howard. The actress’ remarkable transformation undoubtedly garnered her more personal attention and even overshadowed the existence of the film itself.

Movie: Precious (2009)
Mariah Carey forewent glam for her turn as Precious’ homely social worker, Mrs. Weiss. The actress, who reportedly travels with 20 beauticians and sleeps with 20 humidifiers by her bed, received critical acclaim for her virtually makeup-less character.

Movie: V for Vendetta (2006)
The typically cute and pixie Portman shaved all of the long brown locks off that contributed to her girl-next-door image ror the dystopian thriller about the struggle against a totalitarian society. As Evey Hammon, Portman buzzed her hair off in a scene in which her character is tortured. On top of critical acclaim, the actress also received a number of compliments on how she's one of the few women who can make a shaved head look sexy.

Movie: Albert Nobbs (2011)
Glenn Close stars as a woman masquerading as a man to find work as a butler. Since starring in the stage version, Close spent almost 15 years trying to turn it into a film. Her dedication to the project is evident in her strictly menswear wardrobe, minimal makeup, and slicked back hair.

Movie: Bridget Jones' Diary (2001)
Zellweger's weight would infamously yo-yo whenever she was filming for the trilogy. She would routinely binge on a diet of donuts to plump up for the titular character of the romantic comedy, and quickly drop all of the weight before awards season.

Movie: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
Arguably, the most talked transformation of 2011, Rooney Mara shed her WASP-y image to embody the tough-yet-troubled Lisbeth Salander for David Fincher's adaptation of the famous Stieg Larsson novel. Mara butchered her long brown hair and dyed it black, pierced her nose and nipples, bleached her eyebrows, learned to ride a motorcycle, barely ate and maintained her pale complexion by staying away from the sun for the role. If you compare her new image to her character in The Social Network just one year ago, Mara is entirely unrecognizable.

Movie: Boys Don't Cry (1999)
It took four years to cast the role of Brandon Teena, the transgender man who was raped and beaten to death after the discovery of his anomatical female parts. Swank, who was then relatively unknown in Hollywood, auditioned and managed to convince director Kimberly Pierce into casting her by lying about her age “like Brandon Teena would’ve done.” For the role, Swank dressed and lived as a man for a month by taping down her chest and stuffing socks into her pants and dropped a significant amount of weight to highlight her masculine facial structure. At one point, her neighbors even started to believe the "man" often seen coming into her home was her brother. Swank went on to win the Oscar for Best Actress.

Movie: Monster (2003)
Watching Charlize Theron ugly herself up for crime thriller Monster was hard to stomach. She gained 30 pounds through a diet of junk good, wore prosthetic teeth and dabbed on dark makeup to obscure her clear and fresh complexion in order to portray serial killer and former prostitute Aileen Wuornos. The infamous transformation was justified with her Oscar win for Best Actress.