Five characters who made their actors feel better about themselves
When actors talk about their experiences playing a role, their talking points can often fall into a couple of categories. If the part required a physical transformation, either with their body or the addition of elaborate costumes and prosthetics, then the lion’s share of conversation will be devoted to that.
Similarly, if the role is dark and harrowing, which meant the actor had to go to some emotionally raw places to find their character, then that is what people will want to know about. It makes sense, after all – accessing a deep well of vulnerability and sadness is extremely compelling to watch, especially if it comes across in a realistic, nuanced fashion.
Something actors don’t often talk about, though, is when playing a role makes them feel better about themselves. To be fair, they’re usually only asked questions about the fulfilling aspects of mental and physical health when being interviewed about their private lives. However, certain stars have been known to emerge from playing specific roles feeling much better about themselves than when they went in.
From an anxiety-ridden actor who only feels comfortable when playing one particular character to a part that helped one of our finest actors let go of all her insecurities, these are five characters who made their actors feel better about themselves.
Five characters who helped their actors feel better:
J Daniel Atlas – Jesse Eisenberg (‘Now You See Me’ series, 2013-2025)
As anyone who has watched or listened to a Jesse Eisenberg interview surrounding the release of A Real Pain can attest, the poor guy is a nervous wreck. He freely admits to suffering from crippling anxiety at all times, rendering him unable to watch his own movies or even go on a holiday without feeling guilty about the worthier things he could be doing. He told GQ that he suffers from such a lack of confidence on movie sets that he thinks, after nearly every take, “That was terrible. Can we please just do another? And I’m so sorry because it’s also going to be bad.”
Fascinatingly, though, there is one scenario in which all Eisenberg’s nerves, anxieties, and insecurities melt away: when he’s playing J Daniel Atlas in a Now You See Me movie. This unexpectedly enduring franchise has a third entry coming out in 2025, which Eisenberg shot after A Real Pain, and to say it was like a breath of fresh air would be an understatement. In fact, he says playing the ultra-confident and amusingly brash stage magician is positively joyful for him, and he leaves the set every day with a glow.
“I enjoy Now You See Me because my character is a performer,” Eisenberg told The Independent. “I’m also a performer, obviously – but this guy is the most confident performer. He’s worked hard establishing this incredible skillset and doesn’t apologise for it. He has confidence probably in excess, and in a lot of ways, I’m kind of the opposite.” So, as strange as it might be, playing a magician in a throwaway action franchise is quite literally the only time Eisenberg feels totally at ease in his own skin.
Skeletor – Frank Langella (‘Masters of the Universe’, 1987)
Actors have all kinds of motivations for taking on roles, which often seem painfully obtuse to those on the outside. Take Frank Langella, the four-time Tony Award-winning Oscar nominee whose reputation among cinephiles was pretty spotless until 2022, when some unsavoury accusations arose on the set of The Fall of the House of Usher. Until then, he was a respected stage and screen legend, and the only thing he ever took flak for was his decision to don the skull-faced prosthetics of Skeletor in the risible 1987 Masters of the Universe movie.
Here’s the thing, though: Langella felt great playing Skeletor. He didn’t even care that the movie was savaged by critics and flamed out at the box office. Why? Because he became a hero to his young son, and that was all that he needed from the role. “A lot of people talk to me about Skeletor, which is one of my favorite parts,” Langella told Variety in 2020. “They always say, ‘Did you feel like you were slumming?’ And I say, ‘Absolutely not.'”
At the time, Langella’s boy was only four years old and, like most young boys in the mid-’80s, was an enormous fan of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. “He was He-Man, running around with the sword,” Langella smiled. “When they offered me Skeletor, I couldn’t resist. I couldn’t wait to play him.”
Clementine – Kate Winslet (‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’, 2004)
Kate Winslet has always been honest about the struggles she has faced over the years with body image and her place in Hollywood. As insane as it sounds now, she admitted to The Guardian that an acting teacher told her when she was 14 that she might “do OK” if she was willing “to settle for the fat girl parts.” This continually played on her mind when she hit the big time with Titanic in 1997, and it didn’t help at all that the media constantly obsessed over her weight.
During this period, though, Winslet didn’t intend to play the Hollywood leading lady game. She didn’t follow Titanic up with more blockbusters, instead taking on a host of roles in smaller, riskier movies “that sometimes barely even saw the light of day.” She told the Intelligence Squared podcast that these choices were instinctive and suited her as a character actor who “didn’t have to be the in-your-face leading lady who is looking immaculate all the time.”
Her favourite of these roles, and the one that made her feel most comfortable in her niche as an actor, was Clementine Kruczynski in Michel Gondry’s heartbreaking sci-fi romance Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The free-spirited Clementine had multi-coloured, tousled hair and wore bizarrely unique outfit combinations, which took the pressure off any industry or societal need to look “good.” Winslet smiled, “She’s one I’d love to play again because it was just so much fun. And the possibilities for the hair colours were just endless.”
Lee Harvey Oswald – Gary Oldman (‘JFK’, 1991)
This entry might seem a bit strange on the surface. How would playing President John F Kennedy’s supposed assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, have made Gary Oldman feel better about himself? Well, when Oliver Stone hired Oldman to play the rifle-wielding killer who was either a lone gunman or a patsy for a labyrinthine conspiracy involving the CIA/FBI/Mafia/Military Industrial Complex, very little was known about Oswald. So, Stone gave Oldman a mission: find out about the real man.
“He basically gave me airline tickets, some per diem and a few contacts,” Oldman revealed to Uproxx, “and said, ‘Go to New Orleans, go to Dallas, and find out who Oswald was.'” All of a sudden, Oldman wasn’t an actor – he was “a detective” or “an investigator.” He met with people who knew Oswald before that fateful day in 1963, including those who thought he was innocent and others who believed he was guilty.
During Oldman’s sojourn into the life of Oswald, he flexed his brain power in a completely new way. He thought it was “a great way of working” that enabled him to conduct intensive research into a character in a way that wasn’t purely intellectual but also emotional and tangible. In the end, he expanded his mind about a man who could have been very one-dimensional in the film if he hadn’t put in the work. “That was a great experience,” Oldman confirmed. “Just sucking up the history and the world.”
Nancy Adams – Blake Lively (‘The Shallows’, 2016)
When Blake Lively signed up for The Shallows, a film about a medical student trying to survive a shark attack, it quickly became obvious that she was in for a physical task like she’d never experienced. However, she also knew the character spent most of the film in a bikini, so there’d be an expectation that she’d need to get in shape. At the time, though, she wasn’t far removed from giving birth to her first child in December 2014 – so she had ten months to transform her body for the film.
Lively started work with a trainer who “kicked her butt” in a healthy way, so by the time she got to set, she was in fairly good shape. However, the 13-hour days of intense physical activity, such as swimming and stunts, led to her conditioning improving even more. “Being in waves like that, swimming like that, doing such long takes like that all the time,” Lively marvelled to Entertainment Tonight. “I became so much stronger and more fit by the end of production.”
However, Lively didn’t only feel better about herself because she got ripped and looked good in a bikini. Instead, it felt like an emotional victory for a new mum and one that could prove inspiring for other mothers out there struggling with their own body issues after a pregnancy. “It was neat to have that challenge after having a baby because you think your body is so different,” she admitted. She couldn’t help thinking it would never be the same, so it made her feel great to end up healthier and fitter than ever before. She grinned, “I thought, ‘OK, that’s really encouraging.'”
