How Scarlett Johansson Got Ripped To Play Black Widow

As one of the six original Avengers, Scarlett Johansson has been living with her Marvel character for the best part of a decade now. The actress has had to maintain a high level of fitness since making her MCU debut as Natasha Romanoff (aka Black Widow) back in 2010's Iron Man 2, as personal trainer Eric Johnson explained to The Hollywood Reporter. "Scarlett always wants to be within three weeks out of her peak condition," Johnson said right after the release of 2019's Avengers: Endgame. Of course, Johansson has taken on a number of physically demanding roles outside Marvel (Lucy and Ghost in the Shell both jump to mind), but she was a total stranger to the gym when she was cast as Black Widow. Today, they're old friends.

"The gift of fitness has been one of the best parts about working for Marvel," Johansson told THR. "I am stronger and more capable now than I was 10 years ago, which is so awesome to be able to say." But how did she go from a total noob to totally ripped? As her trainer pointed out, this is no ordinary role ("We're trying to create this crazy comic book hero in real life with somebody who's normal," Johnson said), and therefore it requires an extraordinary workout routine. This is how Scarlett Johansson got in shape to play Black Widow.

Scarlett Johansson developed a great relationship with Moneymaker right off the bat. Strictly speaking she was hired to do the things that Johansson couldn't, but in the end, Moneymaker wound up showing the actress how she could do some of those things herself. "I first met Heidi about ten years ago; we were shooting Iron Man 2 and I had a very short period of time to train in," Johansson recalled. "Being as I'd never stepped foot in a gym, I had no experience at all with any sort of martial arts. Heidi was like my beacon of hope... Heidi is so creative in her movement — all the movements really tell a story."

When the pair reconvened for 2012's The Avengers, they took their working relationship to the next level, squeezing in sneaky work-out sessions between takes. They had a little more time to get ready for the shoot this time round, but (with hand-to-hand combat and weapons training on the agenda) it was still hard work. "We only had about five or six weeks to train before we started filming," Moneymaker told Shape. "Luckily, Scarlett is such a professional and works incredibly hard, so she learned all her fights and performed them with perfect execution. We would also take advantage of any time we had free during filming to sneak in a training session."

Scarlett Johansson's next appearance as Black Widow came in 2014's Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Starring alongside the super-ripped Chris Evans is likely to make even the most confident of actors feel a little inadequate, but Johansson made sure she was ready to share the screen with Cap. Speaking to Elle in 2013, the actress revealed that her workouts consisted of exercises that most people associate with men. "I go to the gym twice a week, but if I'm preparing for a role, I sometimes go every day," she said. "I like lifting weights and doing exercises to work my core muscles. To be honest, I work out like a guy!"

This isn't the only time Johansson has alluded to the fact that she's like one of the boys when she hits the gym. It's this weight-heavy approach (coupled with a strict diet and routine) that gets her where she needs to be. "It's boring 5 a.m. workouts and salad and chicken and nothing else, pretty much," she said, as reported by health and fitness blog Lose Stubborn Fat. "It's that old tried and true 'work-out-like-a-dude-and-eat-like-a-rabbit.'" When the time came to get in shape for 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron, Johansson knew all she needed to do was more of the same. "We picked up with the same program we'd used for Iron Man 2 and it had a proven history," she said.

Training to be a superhero isn't just about playing to your strengths. It's also about identifying your weaknesses and pushing beyond them. During his interview with Harper's Bazaar, Johansson's personal trainer revealed that every time they had a workout session they would begin with some mobility work that was "specific to Scarlett's limitations." From the sound of it, the actress would be perfectly happy just hitting the weights all day (her favorite exercises apparently include pull-ups, military presses, deadlifts, pistol squats, and kettlebell swings), but Johnson would make her start by throwing medicine balls and doing bear crawls. "We worked to not only challenge her body to adapt, but also stimulate her mind," he said.

It might not be as simple as plain old pull-ups, but Johansson knows all the multidirectional jumping she does (which sometimes involves boxes and hurdles) allows her to keep up with the pace of shooting a Marvel movie. "If you're doing a running scene, you want to be as fresh and powerful in the first take as you are in the 20th," Johansson told The Hollywood Reporter. For Johnson (who is also responsible for getting Bucky Barnes actor Sebastian Stan into shooting shape), that means "always pushing her ceiling so anything below that is attainable and easier."

Camera trickery and selective wardrobe choices managed to hide the fact that Scarlett Johansson was pregnant when Avengers: Age of Ultron was being filmed. "We're not avoiding any of the danger because the stuntwomen do the danger — as has always been the case," director Joss Whedon told Entertainment Weekly. "She's very central to the movie and when we heard [about the pregnancy] we scheduled things around that." The actress gave birth to daughter Rose (who seems to believe that her mother is an actual real-life superhero) in 2014, and by the time Infinity War and Endgame came around, she was raising her single.

"It's hard to fit everything in when you try to balance motherhood, training, and work," Johansson told The Hollywood Reporter. "That balance is a myth!" In order to hit her workout goals and still be a full-time mom to Rose, Johansson had to become an early riser. She's out of bed at 6 a.m. four or five days a week, giving her time to squeeze in up to an hour in the gym before she heads to set. "[It's] clearing me so that after work, I can make dinner and do bath and nighttime with her before preparing my lines for the next day."

According to Eric Johnson, the thing that really gives Scarlett Johansson the edge when she's trying to get ripped to play Black Widow is her competitive spirit. Johnson has been with her for long enough now to know that all he needs to do to get an extra push out of the actress is show off a little. "If I show her something I can do easily, she wants to do it," he joked with The Hollywood Reporter. "We finish a lot of sessions with sprints, me versus her, and if I offer a 5-yard head start, she gets pissed off that I would even dare." Repeating Johnson's toughest exercises isn't enough, however.

Johansson not only has to be capable of doing the things Natasha Romanoff does — she has to look good doing it. That's where the battle ropes and trusty kettlebells come in handy. "It teaches her to be powerful and strong while [also] elegant and pretty. ... Do it with ease and fluidity, be able to own it." The actress does exactly that when she suits up as Black Widow, and, despite her heroic (and somewhat controversial) death in Avengers: Endgame, she'll get the chance to do it all again when she reprises the role in the upcoming standalone feature. The film is rumored to be a prequel featuring a younger Natasha Romanoff, meaning Johansson will have to train harder than ever before, but hey, whatever it takes, right?