16 Black Swan Secrets That at Least Seem Real

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Not all was as it seemed in Black Swan.

I remember being completely captivated by that 2010 thriller! While it definitely showcased the beautiful world of ballet and featured a production of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, the story really focused on Nina Sayers, an aspiring prima ballerina brilliantly played by Natalie Portman. Everything unfolded through her eyes, and that’s what made it so intense and unforgettable.

And the view through her eyes was not to be trusted.

Natalie Portman explained to TimeOut in 2010 that the core of her acclaimed performance as troubled ballerina Nina – for which she won an Oscar and other major awards – was all internal. She found it fascinating to explore how societal expectations and assigned roles can impact a person, noting that we all create these mental frameworks anyway.

Director Darren Aronofsky, famous for blurring the lines between reality and illusion and for portraying characters facing extreme hardship, told Collider that the film initially presents a stark, almost detached look at the intense demands of being a ballet dancer. However, this shifts into a suspenseful and unsettling atmosphere, similar to the film Repulsion, as the main character, Nina, begins to question her own sanity.

The director explained that the first third of the film feels quite different from the rest. It has a realistic, almost documentary-like quality, which he liked. This creates a sense of immersion and subtly introduces the film’s world, making the audience feel like they’re experiencing it in real time. He felt this contrast worked well, as it sets up the later, more intense moments. Ultimately, he was pleased with how it turned out.

It really did.

Despite its modest $13 million budget and art-house beginnings, Black Swan became a huge commercial success, earning $330 million worldwide and receiving five Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture.

The film also marked the beginning of a significant personal relationship for Natalie Portman and choreographer Benjamin Millepied. During the 2011 awards season, while promoting the film, Portman was pregnant with her first child with her then-husband.

Although the memorable film captivated audiences 15 years ago, its creation was actually quite difficult and fraught with problems.

Here are the secrets of how the cast and crew got it done, from entrée to grand Guignole finale:

At the start of the 2000s, director Darren Aronofsky envisioned a film about ballet, drawing inspiration from his sister’s experiences as a dancer. He was also captivated by the concept of doppelgängers after reading Dostoevsky’s The Double. He believed Natalie Portman would be ideal for the lead role and met with her in New York in 2000. At the time, she had just finished filming her first appearance as Padmé Amidala in Star Wars: Episode I and was a student at Harvard.

Aronofsky claimed he’d completely envisioned the film beforehand, something he said in a 2010 interview with Collider. Portman disagreed, stating that his description of the film was remarkably accurate.

The director explained that after some initial discussions, they began working on the film, but it was a difficult project. Usually, when making a movie about a specific community, people are eager to help and offer access. However, the ballet world was very closed off, making it hard to gather information and put the film together. It took a long time to gain access and learn about their world.

He started working on a screenplay at Universal about a murder in the theater scene, titled The Understudy, written by Andres Heinz. Aronofsky saw it as a potential project that could allow him to explore his interest in ballet. After several unsuccessful drafts, he decided to produce the film independently, and it was later distributed by Fox Searchlight.

The filmmaker had also been deeply moved by a performance of Swan Lake. He explained to the Los Angeles Times that seeing the story of the black and white swans inspired him to rework his entire project, weaving all the characters and myths together around the ballet’s themes. He even joked that Tchaikovsky deserved a co-writing credit!

Fortunately, Natalie Portman was still committed to the project. Director Darren Aronofsky shared with Collider that over time, Portman had playfully warned him she was getting too old to convincingly play a dancer and urged him to get the script finished. Aronofsky would reassure her she looked fantastic and they’d be okay. Eventually, about a year before filming began, he finally completed the screenplay, and that’s how the movie started to come together.

Natalie Portman began preparing for her role in Black Swan while filming the comedy Your Highness in England, a full year before the movie actually started filming in New York. She had a background in dance, having studied ballet and modern dance at the American Theater Dance Workshop when she was younger.

The actress trained intensely for her role, starting with two hours of daily strengthening exercises with her instructor, Mary Helen Bowers, a former New York City Ballet dancer. This initial phase focused on building her strength and preventing injuries. After six months, they increased the training to five hours a day, adding a mile of swimming and three hours of ballet. In the final two months, they incorporated the choreography, bringing the daily training up to around eight hours.

Portman explained that the intense physical training was surprisingly helpful for portraying the character’s emotional state. She described a ballet dancer’s life as almost monastic – a relentless focus on exercise with significant sacrifices, like avoiding social life and restricting diet, all while pushing the body to its limits. This helped her understand the self-denial and discipline inherent in the profession.

However, she told Vanity Fair, “it was very intense but really fun, too.”

In a behind-the-scenes look for Searchlight Pictures, Bowers explained that to convincingly portray a ballerina, an actor needs to train as rigorously as a real dancer.

Natalie Portman maintained a very low-calorie diet during filming, losing about 20 pounds to reach 98 pounds. As soon as the movie wrapped, her first meal was pasta, which she happily ate for every meal of the day, as she told Collider.

Aronofsky explained that because the film was a smaller production with a limited budget, they experienced some delays, which meant Natalie Portman had to maintain her restrictive diet for a longer period than originally anticipated.

He said making the film was incredibly challenging, largely due to a lack of funding and repeated delays. While he personally welcomed the delays as extra time to prepare, he recently learned that Natalie was severely affected by the postponements, forced to subsist on a very limited diet of carrots and almonds. She bore the brunt of the hardship caused by the lack of resources.

Natalie Portman described pointe shoes as incredibly painful, comparing the feeling to something ‘medieval.’ While ballerinas become accustomed to the discomfort, she noted it was a completely new and challenging experience for her.

The actress revealed that some dancers actually lost toenails while filming the movie, but she downplayed it, telling NPR’s Terry Gross in 2010 that professional dancers routinely perform through serious injuries. Once they reach a high level and land these roles, they’re often desperate to keep them, so they’ll push through pain – dancing with sprained ankles, torn ligaments in their feet, or even twisted necks – just to maintain their opportunity.

For Portman, the most challenging aspect of learning ballet was balancing the intense physical demands with the pressure to maintain a very thin physique.

She explained to TimeOut that she listened to her body and didn’t believe in strict dieting. She often heard comments from her ballet coaches and Darren—like being told she didn’t ‘look like a ballerina yet’—which she understood to mean she needed to be thinner.

Addressing the question of whether dancers actually eat, Portman clarified that while dancers often present a public image of healthy eating, and many are healthy, eating disorders are surprisingly common. She emphasized she wasn’t making a generalization, but conversations with dancers revealed that most experience some form of disordered eating during their careers. While some dancers are naturally healthy, Portman pointed out that ballet itself doesn’t cause extreme thinness; achieving that look requires deliberate effort beyond just the physical activity.

As someone who’s looked closely at peak performance, I’ve always been fascinated by the dedication it takes to truly master a skill. Ballet, for example, is incredibly ritualistic – the daily barre work, the meticulous shoe preparation… it’s full of these repetitive, almost compulsive behaviors. And honestly, I see that pattern everywhere – in musicians, coders, anyone who reaches a really high level. It’s that obsessive repetition, pushing until you get it. But there’s a darker side, too. That same drive can unfortunately manifest in negative ways, like eating disorders, and it’s clear to me those issues are often deeply connected to that relentless pursuit of perfection.

Winona Ryder was a major movie star in the 80s and 90s, but hadn’t been in a film for some time before taking on the small but moving role of Beth. She described the part – a former prima ballerina forced to retire while still feeling capable of dancing the lead in Swan Lake – as a “wonderful, juicy role.” She shared this description during an appearance on the U.K.’s Daybreak.

Similar to how Winona Ryder saw newer stars like Natalie Portman rise as her own career began to fade in Hollywood – though without the dramatic public clashes – this situation played out in a less contentious way.

In a 2010 interview with Elle, the actress explained she connected with her character, Beth, because she understood what it felt like to no longer be seen as the ‘young one.’ She was 39 at the time and reflected on how she’d once been eager to grow up, always being the youngest person on set. Now, she often found herself older than her colleagues. Having worked in the industry for 25 years, she admitted it felt surreal.

Ryder is a very sensitive and emotional actor. She became so immersed in playing a bitter former star that she genuinely felt bad after filming – she even apologized to Portman!

After wrapping up filming, I reached out to Natalie and sent her a gift, along with a sincere apology for anything harsh I might have said during the process. It was important to me to make amends and let her know I regretted those moments.

She remembered that the scene where her character destroys a dressing room was the last one she filmed. It reminded her of her first boyfriend, who was prone to dramatic outbursts when she was 18. Trying to recreate that energy, she attempted to smash an Evian bottle, but couldn’t manage it. Her boyfriend at the time teased her about it, and she found herself apologizing during the scene, saying ‘Sorry!’ repeatedly.

Interestingly, a look back at pop culture history shows Winona Ryder began dating Johnny Depp when she was just 17 years old, a relationship she’s described as her first serious one.

Natalie Portman wasn’t the only actress in good shape who lost weight for the role. Mila Kunis, who played Lily – a complex character as Nina’s rival, friend, love interest, and a product of her imagination – ended up weighing just 95 pounds.

While filming in December 2009, actress Mila Kunis told Coming Soon that she was constantly hungry and just wanted to relax instead of working out. She planned to completely unwind after finishing the movie Black Swan in February, saying she intended to spend about a month being a ‘couch potato’.

After being impressed with her performance in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, director Darren Aronofsky envisioned Mila Kunis for the part without asking her to audition. They spent a lot of time discussing the character over Skype before filming began in New York, a project she described as unique and unlike anything else.

In a 2016 interview with Howard Stern on SiriusXM, actress Natalie Portman, nominated for a Golden Globe, clarified that while she did lose weight for a role, she didn’t starve herself and approached it as healthily as possible. She stressed that she wouldn’t advise anyone else to follow the same method.

Since I wasn’t a dancer and hadn’t been trained, I had to learn to balance on my toes – en pointe – in just three months. I explained that learning to do that often meant pretending you knew what you were doing. And, unfortunately, a big part of that meant being very thin.

I never paid attention to my diet before this film. For the first time, I started using a food delivery service. Honestly, and I’m not trying to endorse this, I used to smoke a lot, which suppressed my appetite. I’d eat very few calories – usually 1,200 or less each day. Looking back, it was a really unhealthy way to live – such a low calorie intake, and then smoking on top of that.

Kunis reiterated, “I don’t advocate this at all.”

As a lifestyle expert, I’m always fascinated by how actors build believable relationships on screen. In the case of Natalie Portman and Barbara Hershey in ‘Black Swan,’ director Darren Aronofsky had a really clever idea. Barbara, who played Nina’s mother, Erica, actually wrote letters as Erica to Natalie during the first part of filming. He’d give them to Natalie on key shooting days to help her connect emotionally. Natalie told Collider they weren’t just any letters – Barbara crafted these gorgeous, in-character messages detailing their shared history, love, and connection. It was a beautiful way to build that mother-daughter dynamic and really get Natalie feeling that maternal bond, even though Erica isn’t always the most supportive mom!

It was incredibly sad to learn that one of Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis’ ballet coaches, Georgina Parkinson, passed away just two weeks before we began filming. She was a truly gifted British ballerina – I remember seeing her perform in Swan Lake, it was breathtaking! – and later shared her expertise as a coach at American Ballet Theatre. Losing her so close to the start of production was deeply felt by all of us.

Portman explained to Collider that her ballet coach worked with her in great detail, focusing on everything from hand movements to eye direction during the dance sequences. These subtle gestures helped her clearly distinguish between the characters of Odette and Odile, the White and Black Swans.

Although Nina might have been feeling aroused privately, the way it’s shown on screen is that she’s giving in to Lily’s incredibly alluring and calming presence.

Mila Kunis told Howard Stern that she and Nate were close friends at the time. She described the situation as awkward for everyone involved, but said Darren Aronofsky created a safe and private environment on set, making things easier.

She started to say she felt “as comfortable as possible,” but Stern cut her off and asked if she’d expected the movie to be such a success.

You know, when I heard about that scene from Portman, she described it as just…awkward, but in a funny way. She said it felt really strange, but you just have to go with it and embrace the weirdness, and honestly, that’s what I love about her. It just felt so real!

Natalie Portman readily admitted using body doubles for the dancing and the fight scenes in the film. However, her dance double claims that reports of how much of the dancing Portman performed herself were significantly overstated.

After the awards were given out and the excitement had faded, former American Ballet Theatre soloist Sarah Lane explained to ABC News’ 20/20 in April 2011 that she wasn’t trying to gain recognition. She was speaking out simply because, in her opinion, claims about how much dancing Natalie Portman actually performed in the movie were false.

Lane explained that after Glamour magazine published a profile of her titled “The Real Black Swan,” a film producer contacted her and requested she postpone all further interviews until after the Academy Awards.

As a longtime follower, it was really upsetting to hear the truth about how they were portraying Natalie. They were trying to make it seem like she’d achieved something incredible – becoming a professional ballerina in just a year and a half! But honestly, it’s practically impossible. It takes decades – 22, even 30 years – of dedicated training to reach that level. That’s why they brought me in. All those full-body shots of actual dancing? That was me, doing the work. They needed someone who could actually dance like a ballerina, and that wasn’t Natalie.

In a statement to 20/20, Aronofsky explained the amount of dancing Natalie Portman did in the film. He said his editor counted all the dance shots and found there were 139 total. Of those, 111 featured Portman herself, while the remaining 28 were performed by her dance double, Sarah Lane. This means Portman did about 80 percent of the dancing.

Lane responded by saying it depends on whether you consider close-ups of her face to be dancing shots. He doesn’t think simply showing her face closely counts as actual dancing.

In the end, Lane admitted she had signed a contract that didn’t promise her screen credit, and she genuinely enjoyed working with Natalie Portman. She praised Portman as a beautiful and dedicated actress, saying, ‘I loved working with her, and she was completely focused on her role every day. She absolutely deserved all the Oscar recognition she received.’

Before her interview on 20/20, Portman told TopMob News she was determined to focus on the positive aspects of the film and not let rumors distract from it. She felt she had the opportunity to create something special and didn’t want to let gossip ruin that.

Natalie Portman greatly admired designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the creators of Rodarte, and their ballet costume designs received widespread praise. She was such a fan that she wore Rodarte to accept her Oscar and even on her wedding day.

When it came time for awards, the Mulleavy sisters weren’t able to be considered for an Oscar because they weren’t members of the Costume Guild of America, which upset many in the fashion industry. Costume designer Amy Westcott responded to the criticism by stating that the sisters’ contributions to the film had been overstated.

Initially, I was pleased with the attention Rodarte was bringing to the film; I’m very proud of it and happy whenever more people see it,” Westcott explained in January 2011. “I tried to ignore my own feelings when interviews started to downplay my contributions, as that’s just not my style. However, I was deeply hurt and felt betrayed when articles appeared that personally attacked me, suggesting I’d worked against them. I don’t have a publicist, and I was asked to remain silent to protect the film’s reputation. Sadly, this seems to have negatively impacted how my work on Black Swan is perceived. I didn’t create the rules of the Guild or the Academy, and I’m proud of my professional dedication, so it’s incredibly frustrating and painful to see my name involved in inaccurate and harmful gossip.

Despite not receiving an Academy Award nomination for costumes, Wescott was recognized for her work, winning a BAFTA and a CGA Award for excellence in contemporary film. She and the Mulleavys were also nominated for a Critics Choice Award, as that organization has its own unique selection process.

Generally, the creative partnership was successful. Westcott praised Rodarte’s designs, particularly the vulture-inspired collection, calling it ideal for the Swan Lake sequence in the film. She explained that she and Darren Aronofsky openly shared their research and concepts with Rodarte, and that all costume designs were jointly approved. However, despite widespread recognition of Rodarte as the creator of Nina’s famous black feather tutu, Westcott emphasized that it was a true collaboration between herself, the Mulleavy sisters of Rodarte, and Aronofsky – a point she feels the media has overlooked.

She clarified that the collaboration with Rodarte actually produced seven costumes, despite reports in the press stating forty. The main ballet costumes were originally designed by Zack Brown for American Ballet Theater, and her team simply added some feather details to make them fit the overall design.

Aronofsky had a clear vision for the film’s atmosphere, wanting it to feel both raw and intimate like a dance drama, and suspenseful like a psychological thriller. Westcott, having collaborated with the director on The Wrestler before, was the perfect choice to help achieve that look.

She explained to Clothes on Film that the careful use of light and shadow was intentional, even if viewers don’t realize the technical effort involved. Because the fabrics caused a lot of color changes, everything had to be tested with the camera and adjusted. The film stock itself could significantly alter the colors, so getting the right tones was crucial. Ultimately, they used the color scheme to visually represent the development of Nina’s character and her growing sexuality.

Natalie Portman wasn’t unaffected by the intense emotional and physical demands of playing Nina, a role that involved portraying a character struggling with a breakdown, ultimately leading to a visible injury.

She explained to Vanity Fair that filming involved a lot of stunt work with a double. While she enjoyed it, it was incredibly physically demanding—lots of broken glass, fighting, and jujitsu. That was the only time she suffered an injury that wasn’t related to ballet. She did have some ballet-related injuries, but on this occasion, she hit her head and needed an MRI, though thankfully everything turned out to be okay.

Her ballet injuries, however, sounded pretty rough.

During a November 2010 screening, the film’s choreographer, Benjamin Millepied, explained to TopMob News that Natalie Portman suffered a rib injury while being carried by Vincent Cassel, who played the demanding ballet director Thomas. Cassel hadn’t received much training in proper lifting techniques. Millepied said they repeated a particular scene so many times that Cassel injured his back and was unable to walk the next day, and Portman suffered a displaced rib from being squeezed, leaving her unable to breathe.

Millepied explained that there’s a scene in the movie where the actress undergoes a therapy session involving physical touch – the therapist actually inserts their fingers into her ribs. He emphasized that this wasn’t staged; the actress was genuinely engaged in therapeutic work during the scene.

Mila Kunis also got injured while filming. She told TopMob News at a film festival in 2010 that she tore a ligament, badly stretched her shoulder, needed an MRI, and ended up with some scars and bruises.

Natalie Portman was pregnant with her first child during the entire 2011 awards season.

He also stood out in the movie playing a dancer who wasn’t interested in Nina.

Portman playfully dismissed the idea that someone else was the best actor while accepting her Golden Globe. Later, at the Oscars, while thanking those who supported her, she lovingly referred to her husband, Millepied, as the reason she was able to take on the most meaningful role in her life.

The couple married in a small Jewish ceremony in Big Sur, California, on August 4, 2012. They had two children: a son named Aleph, born in June of that year, and a daughter, Amalia, born in 2017. They divorced in 2024.

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2025-12-03 14:20