Natalie Portman‘s dancing in Black Swan has come under fire since her body double, Sarah Lane, recently said, “Of the full body shots, I would say 5% are Natalie… All the other shots are me.”
Here’s how her co-stars have defended Portman, who won a best actress Oscar for her role:
Co-star Mila Kunis:
“Natalie danced her a– off. I think it’s unfortunate that this is coming out and taking attention away from [the praise] Natalie deserved and got. “She’ll tell you, no, she was not on pointe when she did a fouette [turn]. No one’s going to deny that. But she did do every ounce of every one of her dances. [Lane] wasn’t used for everything. It was more like a safety net. If Nat wasn’t able to do something, you’d have a safety net. The same thing that I had — I had a double as a safety net. We all did. No one ever denied it.”
Director Darren Aronofsky:
“Here is the reality. I had my editor count shots. There are 139 dance shots in the film. 111 are Natalie Portman untouched. 28 are her dance double Sarah Lane. If you do the math that’s 80% Natalie Portman. What about duration? The shots that feature the double are wide shots and rarely play for longer than one second. There are two complicated longer dance sequences that we used face replacement. Even so, if we were judging by time over 90% would be Natalie Portman.”
Choreographer (and Portman’s fiance) Benjamin Millepied:
“There are articles now talking about her dance double that are making it sound like [Lane] did a lot of the work, but really, she just did the footwork, and the fouettés, and one diagonal [phrase] in the studio. Honestly, 85% of that movie is Natalie.”
