26th
One of the most impressive elements about Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is Natalie Portman’s Oscar-winning performance. Not only does Portman grippingly capture the mental disintegration of her character, she also trained for months to be able to convincingly take on the role of a star ballerina. A body double for Portman was used for some scenes, but in a recent LA Times piece, Black Swan choreographer and future Portman husband Benjamin Millepied responded to the body double scuttlebutt by claiming that “85% of that movie is Natalie.”
Portman’s body double, Sarah Lane, has now publicly refuted those claims, saying that Portman’s work only accounts for 5 percent of what you see in the full-body dance scenes in Black Swan.
Lane made these claims to Entertainment Weekly, explaining that attempts were made to cover up the true extent of her involvement in the film. According to Lane, she was pressured by Black Swan producer Ari Handel not to discuss how much of the dancing she really did:
“They wanted to create this idea in people’s minds that Natalie was some kind of prodigy or so gifted in dance and really worked so hard to make herself a ballerina in a year and a half for the movie, basically because of the Oscar…It is demeaning to the profession and not just to me. I’ve been doing this for 22 years…. Can you become a concert pianist in a year and a half, even if you’re a movie star?”
(via eatyourdinner)
