How did Natalie Portman appear in Avengers: Endgame without setting foot on the film set?
Natalie Portman didn’t have to set foot on the set of Avengers: Endgame to be a part of one of the biggest box-office hits of all time.
The actress reprised her role as astrophysicist Jane Foster – originally seen in the 2011 film Thor, and its sequel, Thor: The Dark World – very briefly in Avengers: Endgame, in a scene when the characters of Thor and Rocket go back in time to retrieve the Aether Infinity Stone.
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The two Avengers’ time-travel journey brings them to Asgard at the same time Foster (Portman) is on the planet during the events of 2013’s Thor: The Dark World.
In one scene, we see Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper) sneak past Loki (Tom Hiddleston) while he’s a prisoner in a cell.
Portman’s character has previously been infected with the Aether in Thor: The Dark World and we see a shot of Foster before Rocket gets the Aether out of her off camera.
Jeffrey Ford, a co-editor on Avengers: Endgame says both shots were from unused footage from Thor: The Dark World.
“The shot of Loki throwing his cup in the cell and Thor and Rocket sneaking past him in the background, that’s a piece of digital negative taken from the dailies of The Dark World that we repurposed,” Ford said.
“The same for the scene of Natalie Portman.”
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Anthony Russo, co-director of Avengers: Endgame, said that Portman did “a little bit of voice-over when she’s talking in the distance”, but that was the only thing she had to do for the film.
Yet the line is so brief and faintly placed in the background that it wouldn’t be a shock if she didn’t have to show up to the edit suite to do it.
Indeed, she might have just delivered the line on her phone and sent it to the team.
Avengers: Endgame is now on worldwide release at cinemas
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- The actress is seen reprising her role as astrophysicist Jane Foster in the box-office smash – yet all she had to do was record a little bit of dialogue
