8 Actresses Who Shot Films While Pregnant

Being pregnant shouldn’t really hold people back from carrying on with their work as normal, but being an actress is a slightly different proposition. Once you’ve committed to a movie, there’s really no turning back, so how do you hide a pregnancy if your character in the film isn’t carrying a child?

It’s quite a complicated task for filmmakers but it happens more often than you may have thought.

Scarlett Johansson – ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’

Joss Whedon scheduled ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’s shoot around Scarlett Johansson who was pregnant with her first child. “We didn’t trim any scenes” he told EW, “We’re like: ‘We’ll make it work.’”

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They hid her growing bump by shooting her in close up while her stunt double – Heidi Moneymaker (real name) – took care of the action scenes. They later mapped Scarlett’s face on to the stunt double digitally for long shots.

Helena Bonham Carter – ‘Sweeney Todd’

Helena was pregnant with her second child Nell while shooting the Stephen Sondheim musical with her partner Tim Burton, and her bump was kept concealed beneath corsets. “There were lots of human body parts and blood around,” she told the Mirror. “By then, I was suffering from morning sickness, so all that combined left me wanting to sit down most of the time.”

Reese Witherspoon – ‘Vanity Fair’

Pre-production on Mira Nair’s adaptation of the classic Thackeray novel had to be cut short when Reese Witherspoon fell pregnant with her son Deacon. “We’ve had a couple of scenes where my stomach was peeking out a bit, but we’ve found solutions,” Witherspoon told People magazine, and those solutions mainly consisted of standing behind furniture and wearing billowy period dresses.

Julia Roberts – ‘Ocean’s Twelve’

‘Ocean’s Twelve’ was several weeks into production when Julia Roberts discovered she was pregnant with twins. Weirdly, her character Tess was originally written as 5 months pregnant, but Steven Soderbergh decided to rework the script so that she wasn’t in the final film. They do make a joke of it though when Tess impersonates a pregnant Julia Roberts to infiltrate an art exhibition.

Teri Hatcher – ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’

Hatcher was three months pregnant when shooting began on Pierce Brosnan’s second James Bond film. Her morning sickness caused a number of delays while shooting, causing tension between her and Brosnan who didn’t know she was pregnant. “I got very upset with her - she was always keeping me waiting for hours,” he told the Mirror, "I must admit I let slip a few words which weren’t very nice.”

Halle Berry – ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’

Bryan Singer had to race against time to shoot Halle Berry’s scenes in ‘Days of Future Past’. Her character’s skin-tight catsuit made it pretty difficult to hide her bump that was growing every day. “I was three months pregnant,’ she said on the Queen Latifah Show. “It was different. I had to shoot really fast. Two weeks was about as much as I could do before I was busting out of the suit.”

Jodie Foster – ‘Panic Room’

Jodie Foster replaced Nicole Kidman on Fincher’s home invasion thriller after the Aussie star quit the film with a knee injury. Foster then discovered she was pregnant five weeks into the shoot, so her costume was changed from a tight vest to a loose jumper to accommodate her growing bump. Eventually the production shut down completely to allow Foster to give birth. They later regrouped to finish the movie and complete reshoots, pushing the release date back a month.

Penelope Cruz – ‘Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides’

Cruz discovered she was pregnant partway through shooting the fourth ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ movie. The epic production continued – it’s still the most expensive movie ever made – with the wardrobe department adding elasticated waists to her many costumes to help with her growing bump. Her sister Monica was also drafted in to act as a body and stunt double on wider shots.

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