Mikey Madison got her big break with the role in Anora, and she picked up an Oscar for her amazing performance. This was the most physically demanding role of her acting career so far, and her intense workout routine involved everything from strength training to pole dancing.
Anora stars Madison as a twenty-something exotic dancer whose life takes a wild turn after she marries the wealthy son of a Russian oligarch. She won an Oscar for her breakout role in this indie film, but preparing for it wasn’t easy, and she told Nashville Scene that the training process completely changed her body.
“You have to build lots of upper-body strength and develop muscles in places you didn’t have before, but… the conditioning that goes along with the training… is one of the things that I never expected. So it was a big undertaking to dedicate myself to accomplishing certain skills,” she explained.
Madison said she spent “countless hours a day” learning how to pole dance for several months, and she even took twerking classes. She put a lot of effort into these lessons because she wanted her character to seem like a seasoned dancer after witnessing other pole dancers in action and seeing how effortless they seemed.
