Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman will star in the fourth installment of the series, ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’, which will come to theaters on July 8, 2022. Taika Waititi will return to direct the film after the success of ‘Thor: Ragnarok’, while Christian Bale will make his debut as the movie’s bad guy Gorr the God Butcher. 

While Hemsworth will make his 11th appearance as Thor in the MCU, Portman’s last time as Jane Foster was in ‘Avengers: Endgame’ (in which she only made voiceovers for old footage). However, now she will return in full force not only as Foster but as Mighty Thor, a superhero in her own right. 

And as a superhero, she had to train to look like one. While she spent nearly 10 months getting in shape (or “bulky”, as she would say), there was something else she couldn’t train for: growing almost nine inches to look taller as Thor. Here’s how they managed to accomplish that. 

Is Natalie Portman as tall as Chris Hemsworth?: Her actual height

In an interview with Variety, Portman explained that she was asked to get as big as she could for the role, which was a first for her. While she has done physically-demanding roles before, such as Black Swan, she explained that for that role she was asked to get “as small as possible.” 

She told Variety: “I definitely got as big as I’ve ever been. You realize, ‘Oh, this must be so different, to walk through the world like this.'” Besides training, the crew also had to get creative to make her look taller than her 5-foot-3 inches. 

“I don’t know that I’m ever going to be cast again as a 6-foot character,” joked the actress. “I really relished people seeing me as big.” And she explained how they managed to do so: “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.” 

Natalie Portman on her workout to become Thor and her admiration for Chris Hemsworth 

In an interview with Vanity Fair in 2021, Portman described her workout regimen and diet to transform into the character, working with trainer Naomi Pendergast. “We did a lot of weight training and a lot of protein shakes — heavyweight training that I haven't ever done before. Of course, I've never really aimed to get bulky. It was very physical, so it was a lot of both agility work and also strength work."

And after that experience, she realized how hard it is to maintain a superhero shape. “It’s a quite intense and quite disciplined lifestyle to get to that appearance. Chris (Hemsworth) works so, so hard. Just constantly, every time he has a break, he has to be doing some sort of training. … It’s also the eating and saunas and ice baths and sleep, all this stuff to get everything looking right. It’s a full-time job!” she told Variety.