“Fears?” muses Natalie Portman. “I’m afraid of a lot. I am not a danger-seeker. I like extreme experiences, but not one that I feel would threaten my life. I like scuba diving, for example, but I wouldn’t free-dive. But, work-wise, I try to do things that scare me, because I know they’re gonna challenge me. Having said that, I didn’t know what I was in for with Black Swan. I didn’t realise what it was gonna be like. But the cliché is true: the more you put in, the more you get out.”
It’s hard to know quite what took the 29-year-old actress so much by surprise, since nothing in Darren Aronofsky’s follow-up to The Wrestler could have come easy. For a start, her role — Nina, a prima ballerina who is losing her marbles — required her to go back to the barre a long 15 years after she last packed up her satin shoes, practicing her moves every day on top of a grueling 15-hour shooting schedule. Portman has made this kind of commitment before, notably when she shaved her head and lost weight for the Orwellian satire V For Vendetta, but Black Swan is not simply a matter of physicality. As Nina, Portman must pull off the most demanding role of her career, playing a repressed young woman whose confidence cracks when Lily (Mila Kunis), a younger, rebellious, sexually liberated newcomer, starts snapping at her heels.
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