8 Actors Who Learned a New Language for a Single Role

Putting on an accent is one challenge. Learning to speak, and sometimes think, in another language is a much bigger one. Some performers have made that leap for just one film or series, working through months of tutoring so a scene would sound real.

The eight actors below range from Hollywood classics to a 2025 television project. The details come from published accounts, and where those accounts are thin, I’ve kept the descriptions modest.

Robert De Niro, Sicilian in The Godfather Part II

Despite his Italian heritage, De Niro didn’t grow up learning the language of his family roots. After winning the role in The Godfather Part II, he moved to Sicily for three months before filming began.

The payoff was a performance in which young Vito Corleone speaks Sicilian for much of the film. He won an Oscar for the role. It’s a good example of preparation that audiences never see but still feel.

Meryl Streep, Polish and German in Sophie’s Choice

Streep’s character moves between languages in key scenes. She reportedly begged director Alan J. Pakula for the role, then worked on the language itself, not just the accent. An assistant on set coached her in both German and Polish.

Another account says she rehearsed entire passages in Polish and German so the transitions would feel effortless during filming. That kind of fluency is what makes a character’s shifts between languages feel natural instead of staged.

Penélope Cruz, Italian in Don’t Move

Cruz is a Spanish actress, and the film asked her to play an Albanian woman living in Rome. She reportedly learned Italian from the ground up for the part. That meant working in a language close to her own, which can be tricky because the similarities invite mistakes.

According to one profile, she trained intensively with native tutors and built enough vocabulary and grammar to act in Italian throughout the film. The film shows how far serious preparation can go, even between neighboring languages.

Alicia Vikander, Danish in A Royal Affair

Vikander is Swedish, so Danish might look like an easy step. In practice, she learned Danish to play a courtier in eighteenth century Copenhagen. The two languages are related but sound quite different.

One account says she focused on Danish phonetics that differ from Swedish, especially soft consonants and glottal stops. The goal was to sit comfortably among native Danish co-stars.

Jim Caviezel, Ancient Tongues in The Passion of the Christ

Few roles have asked for more linguistic work. One summary says that playing Jesus put Jim Caviezel through one of the most linguistically demanding performances in modern cinema, with dialogue in Aramaic, Latin and Hebrew.

These are not languages an actor can practice by chatting with neighbors. They require close work with coaches and translators, and the film’s choice to use them made that preparation central to its identity.

Tilda Swinton, Italian and Russian in I Am Love

Swinton played a Russian-born woman married into a wealthy Milanese family. She learned Italian and also performed portions of dialogue in Russian to reflect her character’s origins.

One profile says she studied Italian conversation and script pages at the same time, so she could handle emotional scenes without stopping to think about grammar. The film’s long Italian exchanges show how that work paid off.

Wagner Moura, Spanish in Narcos

Moura is a Brazilian actor and a native Portuguese speaker. He famously learned to speak Spanish fluently in a very short time for his role in Narcos. Playing Pablo Escobar in a Colombian setting made believable Spanish essential.

Portuguese and Spanish share a lot, though that shared ground can make accents harder to place. His commitment to the language helped sell the show’s setting to viewers who speak Spanish natively.

Evan Peters, Several Languages in The Beauty

This is the most recent entry. At a New York Comic Con panel on October 11, 2025, creator Ryan Murphy said he always adds something incredibly challenging for Peters, and this time it was learning several languages.

Peters said he enjoyed the process, noting “It was fun and I had some great tutors.” He also listed the online app Babbel as one of his resources. The details of which languages he used for which scenes are best taken from the show itself.

Taken together, these eight performances suggest that learning a language for a role is rarely about showing off. It’s a way to give a character a believable inner life, one that viewers can sense even without knowing how much work went into it.

The next time a film switches languages mid-scene, listen closely. Someone may have spent months making that moment sound effortless.