Avatars' Actors' Amazing Breath Holding Skills

While Kate Winslet left the "Avatar: The Way of Water" cast and crew stunned by holding her breath underwater for seven minutes while filming the new blockbuster sequel, Zoe Saldaña was certainly no rookie. James Cameron had his cast train with "the world's best breath-hold specialists" so that he could film extended long takes underwater. Winslet held her breath for seven minutes, while Sigourney Weaver got up to six-and-a-half minutes. Saldaña's longest underwater breath hold clocked in at five minutes.

Weaver said she surprised her teacher by holding her breath for so long, adding, "He said to get rid of your mammalian instinct to go, 'Oh my God, my face is in the water.' So, you spend several minutes just putting your body back into that element and letting those land-person feelings dissolve."

Cameron said, "Kate's a demon for prep, so she latched onto the free diving as something that she could build her character around," Cameron told The Times, "Kate's character is someone who grew up underwater as an ocean-adapted Na'vi - they're so physically different from the forest Na'vi that we'd almost classify them as a subspecies. So, she had to be utterly calm underwater, and it turned out she was a natural."

Cameron shot most of "Avatar: The Way of Water" in large water tanks so that his underwater scenes would not feel fake. "You want it to look like the people are underwater, so they need to be underwater," Cameron said. "Sigourney and Zoe and the others weren't particularly ocean-oriented folks. So, I was very specific about what would be required, and we got the world's best breath-hold specialists to talk them through it."

- Variety Magazine

Kirk Krack of Campbell River, British Colombia and the founder of the Performance Free Diving Academy, trained the cast and crew of Avatar. He has also trained Tom Cruise, illusionist David Blaine, Tiger Woods, Lindsey Vonn, Woody Harrelson, and many world champions. His academy instructors have trained more than 10,000 people. https://www.performancefreedivingacademy.com/kirk