10 Actors Who Went Undercover While Prepping For Movies

Find out how these celebs concealed their identity…

When Tom Holland was preparing to star in Spider-Man: Homecoming, he wanted the real experience of attending a STEM school. He jokingly suggested to Marvel that he go undercover at a real high school — and they actually agreed. Tom ended up at Bronx School of Science, which he says was a place for “genius kids” and he didn’t really fit in. He ended up shadowing a student named Arun Bishop, pretending to be his cousin, and not even the teachers knew he was faking it.

“I was sat at the back of a classroom next to quite a pretty girl, and eventually, she was like, ‘So, dude, what’s your deal, man?’ I was like, ‘Well, do you wanna know my secret?’ She’s like, ‘Okay.’ ‘I’m actually Spider-Man.’ She was like, ‘Dude, you’re nuts, bro. You’re nuts.’ I was like, ‘No, seriously. I’m actually an actor. I’m British. I’m playing Spider-Man.’ And she didn’t believe me,” Tom recalled on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

When Hayden Christensen was cast as Leo Campoli in Little Italy he got into character by getting a job at a pizza shop. Since his character also worked at a pizzeria, he got the full experience of working in the shop and even making a delivery.

“[I] worked at a pizzeria. I also delivered a pizza. The people I was delivering to didn’t recognize me and I got a good tip,” Hayden told the Toronto Sun.

Before beginning filming on The Bear, Ayo Edebiri, along with her co-star Jeremy Allen White went to Pasadena’s Institute of Culinary Education and then got jobs working in restaurants. There, they did kitchen training undercover for several months — but Ayo says that while she went unrecognized, everyone knew Jeremy.

“People recognized Jeremy, but nobody knew who I was at all, which was good for research. It was kind of annoying when I was like ‘Yeah, I stayed up late to clean until 12, and Jeremy was like ‘I got to go home!’” Ayo told Deadline.

Back in the early 2000s, Renée Zellweger prepared for her role in Bridget Jones’s Diary by going undercover at the publishing company Picador. She worked there “a month or two” and went totally unnoticed by her co-workers and “nobody knew” it was her despite some pretty big coincidences.

“I was ‘Bridget Cavendish’ because Jonathan Cavendish, the film’s producer, was very good friends with the gentleman who was the editor of Picador. Part of my job was to take the newspaper clippings from the daily papers and file them under Helen Fielding’s file, as they represented her. And I started having to clip these articles about this ‘crap American actor’ who was set to play Bridget Jones,” she told British Vogue.

She added, “Maybe I was out of context, or maybe it was having more chubby cheeks. It was odd. One of the ladies who worked in the office was reading the Anna Quindlen novel One True Thing, and they made a film out of it [that I starred in], so I’m on the cover of the book. And she’s there telling me about having finished it on the Tube on the way to work and how marvelous it was.”

Robert Pattinson got ready for his role in Good Time by living undercover and embodying his character. He moved to New York City and rented a basement apartment in Harlem. He then got a job at a car wash — but didn’t end up working there very long before getting fired.

“I never opened my curtains, didn’t change the sheets the entire time I was there, for those two months, and I would just sleep in my clothes. There was this woman who lived upstairs, and she kept trying to see what was going on because she thought I was such a weirdo,” Robert shared with news.com.au.

He continued, “I kept really weird hours, and I would run in and quickly close the curtains. I was like this freak living in the bottom of the basement. I was by myself the whole time. I only ate cans of tuna the whole time. I probably have mercury poisoning now because I ate it just out of the can. That’s all that was there: tuna, hot sauce, and Nespresso capsules.”

To get ready for her role as a stripper in Hustlers, Constance Wu says she went undercover and worked at a strip club. Looking back, Constance says she changed her appearance by putting in hair pieces and added fake tattoos on her neck. She ended up making a ton of money the first night she was at the club.

“I did work at a strip club to get ready for Hustlers. I went undercover. I gave lap dances to strangers. I’m not lying! I made 600 bucks my first night!” she said on The Kelly Clarkson Show, jokingly adding, “Maybe I found my real self there in the strip club.”

In The Stand In, Drew Barrymore portrayed both actress Candy Black and her stand-in Paula, and had to wear facial prosthetics to differentiate the characters. Before filming began, she decided to find out how convincing the prosthetics were by going into public and even auditioning for a random project at Central Casting.

Director Jamie Babbit told Entertainment Weekly, “She got into the building with my driver’s license, and she went in and interviewed. We wanted to see what the desperate life of a stand-in was like, someone who people don’t give a shit about and who just wants to fit in with the theater crowd but really isn’t welcome. I think it’s been years since Drew has been treated like that in the business, so that was a fun acting rehearsal.”

Ahead of filming Boys Don’t Cry, Hilary Swank decided to live as a man for several weeks to see what it was like to be transgender. While it may be a controversial choice now, Hilary explained that she didn’t want to do the movie if she didn’t think she could pass as a boy in real life.

“I knew that if I couldn’t go out on the street and pass as a boy that I didn’t want to do the movie. I knew I’d be doing it a grave injustice so I went out and lived my Life as a boy for four weeks. You know, that entailed strapping my breast and packing a sock strap,” Hilary shared on Conan. “I felt an intense need just to be honest with the story and…I learned a lot about humanity and I learned a lot about myself going out on the street.”

Before Aaron Eckhart filmed Rabbit Hole, he went undercover as a grieving parent like his character. He joined a child loss support group and had to lie about having a child that passed away. He went as far as telling a fake story to the rest of the group and ended up getting so wrapped up in it all that he had an emotional breakdown.

“It’s very sensitive to go in there, of course it is. I did the research. The gathering is very quiet. There’s 10 people, couples. [Their children had passed away] very recently, it’s fresh. You’re sitting in sort of a circle. Then one person goes, then two, three, then it gets to me. And by that point you’re just so flushed that you just start going and giving the details of the story,” he shared on The Howard Stern Show.

Back in the 1970s, Robert De Niro went undercover before filming Taxi Cab. He got his taxi license and began giving rides around New York City. While he mostly went unnoticed, one aspiring actor who got in the backseat did call him out.

“A young actor got in the car one night, and he saw that it was [Robert] driving the car. And he said, ‘You just won an Oscar.’ He said, ‘By God, is it that hard to get work?’” director Martin Scorsese told Today.