Sarah Lane on being Natalie Portman's ballet double: I did most of the dancing
(CBS) Sarah Lane, an American Ballet Theatre soloist who was Natalie Portman's dancing double in "Black Swan," has claimed that the Oscar-winning actress didn't perform most of the dance moves in the film.
"Of the full body shots, I would say 5 percent are Natalie," Lane, 27, told Entertainment Weekly.
Pictures: Natalie Portman
Pictures: "Black Swan"
She claims that Portman's head was digitally placed onto her body for many of the complicated dance moves, including the dramatic sequence in the end of the film.
Lane goes on to say that she was the victim of a cover-up calculated to help Portman's chance of winning an Oscar.
"They wanted to create this idea in people's minds that Natalie was some kind of prodigy or so gifted in dance and really worked so hard to make herself a ballerina in a year and a half for the movie, basically because of the Oscar," she said.
She continued: "It is demeaning to the profession and not just to me. I've been doing this for 22 years. Can you become a concert pianist in a year and a half, even if you're a movie star?"
Lane's accusations come after Portman's fiance, Benjamin Millepied, who also served as the movie's choreographer, downplayed her involvement in the movie and suggested that Portman performed "85 percent" of the dance moves in a recent Los Angeles Times interview.
"There are articles now talking about her dance double [American Ballet Theatre dancer Sarah Lane] that are making it sound like [Lane] did a lot of the work," Millepied said, adding, "But really, she just did the footwork, and the fouettes, and one diagonal [phrase] in the studio. Honestly, 85 percent of that movie is Natalie."
Fox Searchlight dismissed Lane's claims in a statement released over the weekend, saying "We were fortunate to have Sarah there to cover the more complicated dance sequences and we have nothing but praise for the hard work she did. However, Natalie herself did most of the dancing featured in the final film."
Portman has yet to provide a comment on the matter.
