10 Insane Skills Actors Learned For Movie Roles

5. Jennifer Lawrence Learned How To Skin Squirrels (Winter's Bone)

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Jennifer Lawrence was barely out of her teens when she received her first-ever Oscar nomination, with her performance as Ree Dolly in Winter's Bone coming out of nowhere to strike a chord with Academy voters.

There was something natural and effortless about her acting in the film, and one of the reasons for this is because she fully immersed herself into the world her character lived in, and took it upon herself to learn skills that her character would also have.

During a chat with Vanity Fair, the actress claimed that the "strangest" thing she's ever had to do for a role occurred while preparing for the gritty and grounded world of Winter's Bone, where she learned how to skin a squirrel - for real.

There's a scene in the film where Lawrence's character puts this skill to good use, confidently preparing the unfortunate animal with her bare hands.

But Lawrence herself? She was far from confident while actually learning this skill. She told E! Online that one of her brother's friends taught her how to do it, but she found it so traumatising that she ended up running away and crying.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.