Scarlett Johansson's 'Avengers' Diet Helped Her Fit Into Black Widow Costume

by UInterviewMay 7, 2012, 12:00 amNews >

Scarlett Johansson, 27, is all the rage as Black Widow, a.k.a. Natasha Romanoff in The Avengers, which took the box office's top spot with a record-breaking $200.3 million on its opening weekend. But the perfect fit of Johansson's skintight black suit came at a price. Johansson had to switch to a high-veggie diet to look the part in the Black Widow costume.

"How come I get the rabbit food question," she said about her Avengers diet, reports The Sydney Morning Herald. "Yes, surely. You're training and doing all that stunt work so you eat a lot of green things."

Intense training was also part of the deal. "I think me, [Jeremy] Renner and Tom [Hiddleston] probably spent the most amount of time in the stunt gym, because we have these huge, intense choreographed sequences," Johansson said.

Diet and gym aside, the Black Widow suit itself presented its own challenge. "I thought I drew the short end because I was complaining about the fact that I wear this latex catsuit and how uncomfortably hot it is and all of that, and then I look around and think, you know I had it pretty good. Chris Hemsworth actually has a cooling system attached to his costume," Johansson said, according to The Washington Post. "We spent a lot of time comparing and contrasting the pluses and minuses of our superhero suits."

The Avengers, directed by Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Joss Whedon and starring Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner / The Hulk), Chris Evans (Steve Rogers / Captain America), Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark / Iron Man), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Cobie Smulders (Agent Maria Hill), Stellan Skarsgard (Professor Erik Selvig), Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury) and Gwyneth Paltrow (Pepper Potts), as well as Renner (Hawkeye), Hiddleston (Loki), and Johansson, is in theaters now.