It was undoubtedly an extraordinary and exhilarating performance; Oscar-winner Natalie Portman so made the role her own, it is difficult to imagine anyone else playing Nina Sayers, the frail protagonist of Black Swan.
Portman’s career was launched with her equally-impressive performance as an 11-year-old orphan befriended and protected by a hit-man in Leon (1994).
Further great roles followed in films as diverse as Heat (1995), her critically-acclaimed turn in Beautiful Girls (1996), her portrayal of Queen Amidala in the Star Wars prequels (1999-2005) and her Oscar-nominated part as a stripper in Closer (2004). But it was to be Black Swan that would showcase her incredible depth, range and bravery.
In Black Swan, Nina is what is derogatorily referred to as a ‘bunhead’; the term applied to a ballerina whose life revolves around her dance. She has led a quiet sheltered life, protected by her domineering mother and never really given a chance to grow up.
But even Nina is taken by surprise by the determination awakened in her when she gets the role of the Swan Queen in popular ballet Swan Lake – a determination to explore her dark side; a journey fraught with darkness and danger that threatens to drive her insane.
Director Darren Aronofsky had only one person in mind for the role. “Very soon after I first started thinking of the idea for Black Swan, I met with Natalie for coffee in Times Square,” he explains in the film’s production notes. “She had done a lot of ballet before she became an actress and had continued doing it over the years just to stay in shape. She told me straight away that one of the things she’d always wanted to do was play a dancer.”
He continues, “The role of Nina is quite different from anything Natalie has done before and she took it to another level. Playing Nina was as much an athletic feat as a feat of acting.”
It was an acting and athletic feat that took Portman to places never before explored. Says Portman of her character: “What Nina wants is perfection, which is something that can only exist for a brief, fleeting moment – but like all artists, she may have to destroy herself to find that.”
As an avid lover of dance, it was a world Portman was delighted to explore, especially given the parallels the story has with Swan Lake – the most obvious being the rivalry between the White Swan and the Black Swan mirrored by that between Nina and main rival Lila (played by Mila Kunis).
To prepare herself for the most physical role she had ever undertaken, Portman had to go through a most demanding training regime for five hours a day, every day, for almost 10 months before filming. She worked with a number of dancers and trainers, and went through an intense fully-rounded dance education in that short period of time.
“Every small gesture has to be so specific and so full of lightness and grace. I knew it would be a challenge, but I never expected just how physically tough it turned out to be,” Portman says.
Her bachelor’s degree in psychology was also helpful to her preparation for the role, allowing the actress to tackle Nina’s mental disintegration with an honesty that was essential to making the character believable.
“I saw Nina as being caught in a cycle of obsession and compulsion. The positive side of that for artists and dancers is that by focusing so hard you can become a virtuoso, but then there’s a much darker side, an unhealthy side, in which you can become completely lost,” explains the actress.
All that work certainly paid off. The critical adulation and audience acclaim she received for the role has culminated in numerous awards, climaxing in the Academy Award she picked up two weeks ago. Not bad for the little girl who befriended an assassin all those years ago...