(Credits: Far Out / Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Sun 14 December 2025 18:45, UK
Natalie Portman was in legitimate danger when shooting the most acclaimed role of her entire career.
Anyone who had been following Natalie Portman’s career knew that she was destined to be one of the great contemporary actresses, as she had managed to deliver amazing performances in Leon: The Professional and Beautiful Girls when she was still a child.
Although Portman received some unnecessary backlash for her part as Padme Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (which frankly was not her fault), it became more commonly accepted that she was an acting genius by the time she gave her career-defining performance in Black Swan.
Black Swan became the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed film of writer/director Darren Aronofsky’s entire body of work, as it perfectly embodies the struggles that artists go through in order to reach perfection. Portman plays the sensitive ballet dancer Nina, who is cast in a production of Swan Lake after dedicating her entire life to the craft. Although she is able to perform the ethereal, beautiful side of the story seamlessly, Nina finds it more challenging to accept the darker attributes of the “Black Swan.”
Portman went through rigorous training to ensure that she could perform the ballet performances. While Aronofsky is a filmmaker who is known for making intense films in which actors are pushed to their limits, Portman also made it a goal to ensure that what she was doing on screen was as seamless and authentic as possible; in this sense, her real life began to imitate that of the character Nina.
One of the most striking scenes in the film involves Nina getting into a fight with rival dancer Lily (Mila Kunis), in which they break a mirror. Metaphorically, this is meant to indicate that Nina’s reality is shattering, and that she has become so immersed in her role that she is unable to distinguish between her real life and the story of Swan Lake. Life often imitates art, and Portman got so dedicated to making the scene feel as real as possible that she told Vogue that she had “completely blacked that out,” and had “no memory” of ever filming it.
Kunis admitted to having a more complete memory of shooting the day in question, as she recalled that Portman had been “scarred up” around her neck, and that even Aronofsky was taken aback by how hard “she really went for it.”
The hard work that Portman put into the role certainly paid off, as she captured a sense of madness and excellence within her characterisation of Nina that was hailed as one of the most impressive acting achievements of the 21st century. Black Swan became an unexpected blockbuster hit and earned many major Academy Award nominations, including a win in the Best Actress category for Portman.
Portman has certainly kept up her string of excellent roles in the aftermath of Black Swan, as she earned another Oscar nomination for her heartbreaking portrayal of President John F Kennedy’s widow in Jackie, and played another semi-meta role in Todd Haynes’ tricky satire May December. That being said, the fact that Portman has yet to take on another role that is as physically demanding as her part in Black Swan may indicate that filming Aronofsky’s masterpiece may have pushed her to her limit.
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