10 Actors Who Learned A New Language for a Movie

Native Brit Kristin has appeared in several French movies, including I've Loved You So Long.

Always up for a challenge, the comedian recently announced that he is learning Spanish for the upcoming film Casa De Mi Padre (My Father's House).

The Chinese actress learned English phonetically for her first American movie role in Memoirs of a Geisha.

Captain Kirk learned the invented language of Esperanto so that he could appear in the cult classic Incubus.

Penelope, whose native language is Spanish, learned Italian just so that she could star in the movie Don't Move. Her dedication clearly worked - she won a Donatello Award (the Italian equivalent of an Oscar) for the role.

Not only did Tilda learn Italian for her role in I Am Love, she had to learn to speak it with a Russian accent because her character was an immigrant.

Antonio Banderas was a huge star in Spain, but in order to make the leap to Hollywood he needed to learn English. His first English-language role was in House of the Spirits. To this day, Antonio has it written into his contract that he does his own Spanish-language dubbing for his films.

Along with other stars of The Passion of the Christ, Jim learned Aramaic so that they could recite lines from the Bible in the original.

The actor had to learn French in a hurry for his role in The City of Lost Children.

Liv Tyler learned to speak Elvish for her role as Arwen in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. She used to leave her friends voicemail messages in the language to practice.