Natalie Portman’s fiance defends use of two body-doubles in ‘Black Swan’

Earlier last week I told you about Sarah Lane, the professional dancer who was Natalie Portman’s body-double in Black Swan and whose role in the movie had been kept a secret up until after the Oscars that brought Portman her first Best Actress Academy Award. Now, days after Lane’s revealing interview, Natalie’s fiance, baby-daddy and Black Swan’s choreographer Benjamin Millepied speaks in defense of his heavily-pregnant girlfriend saying that despite using two (!!!) body doubles in the movie, 85% of what we saw in Black Swan was Natalie.

There are articles now talking about her dance double that are making it sound like [her body double] did a lot of the work, but really, she just did the footwork, and the fouettes, and one diagonal phrase in the studio. Honestly, 85 per cent of that movie is Natalie,” Millepied said. “It was so believable, it was fantastic, that beautiful movement quality.”

And still I feel betrayed. There’s nothing shameful about confessing that the actress had a body double in the movie, many actors use body doubles. It’s just wrong to conceal facts for more public buzz.

[Producers] were trying to create this facade that she had become a ballerina in a year and a half,” Sarah Lane, one of the body doubles said in her interview last week.

Though Lane seems to be hurt by the anonymity in the movie, Natalie’s second body-double Kimberly Prosa still says that Natalie Portman did a great job on the movie set as both an actress and a dancer:

She definitely put her work in. Just in a couple of months, she looked credible – all the dancers on the set were really impressed at how well she pulled that off – it was pretty amazing,” Prosa told The Huffington Post.

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