Natalie Portman Quashes 'Black Swan' Dancing Feud

By Sarah Crow Posted Apr 7th 2011 01:30PM

Natalie Portman has a lot of things going for her -- an Oscar win, a loving fiance and a baby on the way, to name a few -- but a recent, highly-publicized disagreement with a dancer from 'Black Swan' has momentarily eclipsed the actress's good fortune.

Following Portman's Oscar win, her 'Black Swan' dance double, Sarah Lane, announced to the press that the actress had done very little of her own dancing in the film.

"Of the full body shots, I would say 5 percent are Natalie," Lane told Entertainment Weekly. "They wanted to create this idea in people's minds that Natalie was some kind of prodigy ... It is demeaning to the profession."

While Portman's 'Black Swan' co-star Mila Kunis and director Darren Aronovsky came to the actress's defense, Portman had remained mum about the controversy until now.

"I know what went on and we had an amazing experience making the movie," says Portman. "I don't want to tarnish it by entering into nastiness."

Prior to the film's release, the actress admitted to having a dance double, telling EW, "I do have a double for the complicated turning stuff. It was not anything I ever could have done in a year, nothing I could've caught up with. But I think it was just better for all of us if I did as much as possible."

Despite the conflicting reports over Portman's dancing in the movie, the actress has nothing but positive things to say about her experience working on the film.

"It's such a positive thing what we get to do," Portman tells E! of her time on set. "We get to create things. I'm really proud of everyone's work on the movie and of my experience... I'll have that forever, so it's nice for me to know about that no matter what kind of nastiness or gossip is going around."

Tags: natalie Portman

Comments

(39)

Friday 08 April

By J.T.

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Brance, you are an ignorant fool.

By joan

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Spoken like a true racist, anti semite Brance and it is disgusting. I do not care what race, color or creed an actor is if the can act as Natalie Portman, Sandra Bullock, Leonardo DiCaprio, Laurence Fishburn, etc. can an do. Your remark is totally disgusting....

By Dayna

@ Brance - please kill yourself....seriously, it's the right thing to do. Do it today.

By Brance

The truth hurts! You know it to be true! Just like American Idol. Look who they saved! The Jew boy stayed and the beautiful singer Pia had to leave. Fixed. THAT is racism! You people are too blind to see the facts. Denial!

By drewan

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She did a great job with an intensity that is typical N. Portman. That part was about an emotional crackup and she put everything into it.

By Judy M

The movie was about the ACTING, not really the dancing. Natalie was awesome in the part. I don't know why people have to tear down her performance.

By Julie

The point is Natalie CAN NOT dance "EN POINTE" so yes I believe 5% of the full boby shots was all she did....isn't that why they hired Sara??? Not sure if Natalie ever said it that way and the media left that out or if she is really deluded into thinking she might be able to with another years training.

By Lisa

Agreed..the movie was about what she was going through not about the dancing...get over it

By Koda

Home Grown Terrorists,Drug dealers on our borders, USA in 3 conflicts, The United States Government Closing down,
our huge debt to China, high unemployment,millions without health insursance, people starving in America.
Are you all seriously taking Hollywood as being real ?
Wake up America it's all fake and dollars to be made.
As long as people are willing to spend money on movies, Hollywood will do whatever it takes to lure you in.
It's not how thing really are, it's how they want you to percieve it to be. The Natalie Portman story is crap and crap is king ! Lets move on..........

By Joe

Koda, if you are looking for real news, why the hell are you in popeater? Get over yourself. The rest of us are well aware of what is going on around us, but sometimes everyone needs a break.

By Ghanima

I have not seen movie but from what I have read Natalie did an incredible job acting as a girl who was suffering from a nervous breakdown. From what I have read about the plot and some of the scenes the acting could not have been easy and she put a lot of emotion into it, drawing the audience into her characters suffering. That's what she deserves the credit for.

By Lu

That Lane woman is hating on Natalie's good fortune. When do actors actually do what their portrayed character actually does in real life?

By TTB

Funny, and the dancer did 00% of the acting. Portman didn't win for the films twirl scenes. Sarah Lane must not be a very bright star.

By not very happy

I was very dissapointed with the movie. There was so much mixed reports when it was released. I waited untill it came out in dvd, I for one refuse to pay thearter prises. With great anticipation I sliped in the disk, within a few minutes I thought to myself what a load of crap this is.I felt that the director needed to go back to film school.I felt that Nat, and the rest of the cast did a good job but the cut was terrible.I could not fallow the story line. I kept wondering where are we in this film?What is real? Maybe I need to go to film school to fully understand this movie.As for the Oscar I belive it was bought by the producers.

By Ken Wayne

With actors and insurance to deal with. You cant afford to have accidents or injuries. every actor has stunt doubles for the difficult and dangerous work. Get real, its fantasy!!

By tanji123

This is simply what goes on in Hollywood all the time. It takes a lot of people to make a great movie, but typically, only 2 or 3 of them get all the credit. This stand in dancer probably made most of the dance scenes for the movie, but then sees the cast pretty much insinuate that Natalie did almost all of the dancing scenes that you see in the movie. They should have given more credit to the stand in and her dancing abilities. And I love the "no information provided" response. " I had an amazing experience". She really doesn't want to say that she did as much of the dancing as she could for the movie. And that what she could do added up to about 8% of the dancing. And the stand in did the rest.

By Emilly

I just watched the movie last night. I thought it was a bit predictable and boring BUT it was well made for what it was meant for. Natalie is one of the great actresses of our generation, I've watched many of her movies and I usually always like her acting. In this movie, her character was a young neurotic girl craving perfection and her imagination went overboard trying to gain perfection as the black swan. We as viewers were not watching her from the outside, we WERE her, that is why we weren't supposed to know what was hallucination and what wasn't.

By Charmaine

Shame on this dancer chick for trying to get her 15 min by bashing Natalie. I don't care if all Natalie did was take a bow after each routine THE OSCARS ARE FOR ACTING and Natalie won based on her portrayal of the character. No one really cares if she didn't really do the dancing and the Academy isn't going to take the Oscar back just because Nat had a dancing double. P.S. aren't the doubles supposed to be unknown?????? Why does this one think she's so special? Know your place dance double.

By jj

she didn't win the oscar for dancing she won it for acting crazy.
everyone knows she isn't a dancer and everyone knows body doubles and stunt doubles don't get any credit --ever. its' too bad the real dancer feels slighted but oscars go to the stars and that's the way it has always been.

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