Soon after the L.A.-based Kunis was cast in "Black Swan," the film's choreographer, Benjamin Millepied, contacted the Los Angeles Ballet's artistic directors and asked if they could provide Kunis with ballet training. Instead of taking on the task themselves, they recommended Blacker for the assignment.
"Black Swan" is about a ballerina, played by Portman, who is cast as the lead in "Swan Lake" and gradually succumbs to madness even as she realizes her artistic potential.
Did Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis lose weight for Black Swan?
Already lean, Kunis dropped 20 pounds in order to play Natalie Portman's ballerina frenemy in "Black Swan." At 95 pounds, Kunis says "I was muscles, like a little brick house, but skin and bones." Unfortunately, when she gained the weight back, Kunis says it ended up in completely different places.
Did Natalie Portman learn how do you do ballet for Black Swan?
It's no secret that Natalie Portman had a dancing double for her Oscar-winning performance in 'Black Swan. ' It clearly would have been impossible for a ballet neophyte such as herself to learn some of the advanced techniques in less than a year.
The main character, Nina, is played by Natalie Portman. Nina is a prima ballerina who has been dancing her whole life with dreams of becoming the perfect ballerina. The film is in first-person, allowing the audience to see into Nina's brain.
There are simply too many psychological issues going on with Nina. She shows elements of an anxiety disorder with obsessive compulsive behaviors. She also manifests self-injurious behavior and some signs of an eating disorder.
Hi. Her character did, but she didn't. That said, it was still extremely awkward for both of them, and they have spoken about their discomfort while shooting the scene quite a few times.
She also needed to portray a gifted ballet dancer, and persuasively enough for the character to appear as threatening competition to Nina. Yet unlike Portman, Kunis had never studied ballet. So what did she do to prepare for the role of a classical ballet dancer? She became the pupil of Alexandra Blacker.
Did Natalie Portman wear pointe shoes in Black Swan?
The way she wears her clothes and slouches around in her practice-kit is well-observed, and the minutiae of darning and breaking in pointe shoes is spot-on. Portman acted well in Black Swan, but if she has failed to acknowledge Lane's contribution, she may have acted pretty gracelessly too.
Did Natalie Portman do all her own dancing in Black Swan?
There are 139 dance shots in the film. 111 are Natalie Portman untouched. 28 are her dance double Sarah Lane. If you do the math, that's 80% Natalie Portman.
Mila Kunis plays an addict in Rodrigo Garcia's “Four Good Days,” and to play the part, she had to lose an extraordinary amount of weight and watch a lot of YouTube videos.
How many calories did Mila Kunis eat for Black Swan?
Mila Kunis has confessed that her diet was restricted to 1,200 calories per day while filming Black Swan. The actress - who shrunk down to 95lbs for her role as a ballet dancer in the film - revealed that she was in "hell" during filming and only ate foods that fit in her hand, reports the Daily Star.
“I really just wanted to walk out,” says Sara Mearns, remembering when she saw Black Swan in theaters. Like Nina, Mearns is a principal dancer at New York City Ballet. “Everything that she was going through was completely wrong and opposite of what I had gone through and what I think every ballerina goes through.”
Natalie Portman has transformed herself for many film roles, but nothing was as grueling as her Black Swan makeover. The actress shed an astonishing 20lbs from her already slight frame to play a ballerina in the 2011 film and admitted it put such a toll on her body that she thought she was going to die.
It's excessive and psychologically imprecise, coarse where it should be refined and too much like a David Cronenberg horror movie in places where restraint and intellectual rigor are called for. Black Swan is a stage door melodrama putting new spins on cliches as old as "All About Eve" (and maybe Adam).
How much dancing did Natalie Portman really do in Black Swan?
In a written statement, "Black Swan" director Darren Aronofsky said, "Here is the reality. I had my editor count shots. There are 139 dance shots in the film -- 111 are Natalie Portman untouched. Twenty-eight are her dance double Sarah Lane.
Can child stars go on to credible careers? With her Ivy League credentials and a performance in Black Swan that's put her in line for an Oscar, Natalie Portman proves it can be done... At 29, Natalie Portman has already been in the business a long time.
Kunis engaged in cardio and Pilates, "train[ing] seven days a week, five hours, for five, six months total, and ... was put on a very strict diet of 1,200 calories a day."
Although her stunt double rehearsed all the running and jumping and falling and whatnot (and there's a lot of it), Kunis did almost everything we see on film.
Zoe Saldana studied many types of dance growing up in New Jersey and maintains her passion for ballet first and foremost. In fact, Zaldana's first big screen role was in the unforgettable 2000 ballet film 'Centre Stage'.
In the final ballet performance in Black Swan, Nina is flawless and seems to have achieved the perfection that she was striving for so long. But given that her abdomen wound was still open and bleeding, she most likely succumbed to the bleeding as she falls through the air and lands on the mattress.
But speaking as a psychiatrist, Lamberti said the film did not accurately depict schizophrenia, as has been widely speculated, but "does present a reasonable portrait of psychosis." "People tend to be scared of things they don't understand," he said.
According to Malaspina, Nina's affliction is most consistent with a severely neurotic, obsessive-compulsive patient with features of a borderline personality disorder who suffers from “mini-psychotic episodes.”
