In her new movie Black Swan, Natalie Portman, has pushed herself to the limit. She plays a ballerina who suddenly seems to be crumbling as she pursues the role of lifetime, and critics are already calling it the role of Natalie's lifetime, a performance that could win her Oscar. We're lucky to have her join us this morning to talk about it. And thank you for coming in this morning. Thank you for having me. I showed it to whole group of people at our house over Thanksgiving, and we were all mesmerized (thank you) by the end, and I couldn’t really figure it out to final few minutes.
It's a real, uh, conversation piece I think, I think it's definitely something that will leave you with a lot to talk about after you see it. And it's something you pursued with real intensity for so long, more than 10 years in the making, what was it about this film and this role?
Well, I really want to work with director Darren Aronofsky, the director of the film, I’ve just admired his work forever, so when he approached me about 10 years ago, I was just excited, the prospects of working with him. And I also just love dance, so I thought it will be such a sort of dream come true, to get, you know. You danced as a young girl, right? I danced until 12 then I stopped until I started training for this film. But you're really trained, I saw, I read your coach said it. You know, you decided in order to play a ballerina, you had to train like ballerina. Oh, yeah, I mean, we did a year ahead of time then we're doing like 5 to 8 hours a day, ballet, cross training, swimming, toeing, just basic working out all day. It gives me a complete new respect for ballet dancers. You lost 20 pounds, one of the things you see in the film is how, I guess, it's expected from Darren Aronofsky doing the rest, how physically punishing ballet could be. Oh, absolutely, I mean, I couldn't believe today, I was reading in the New York Times, there was a review of the Nutcracker, and the reviewer in the review said the ballerina looks fat. And I was like in what other fields is it acceptable to judge artists by how big they are, and it was just amazing all of the pressures on dancer to starve themselves with extreme athleticism.
The physical pressures and the psychological pressure, and your character is really under great psychological pressure from herself, from her mother, from the ballet master, and I want to show a clip of you that really gets that and the kind of manipulation, I guess your character was facing. In 4 years, every time you dance, I see you obsessed getting each in every move perfectly right, but I never see you lose yourself, ever! All the discipline for what?
Just wanna be perfect. You what? I wanna be perfect. Perfection is not just about the control, it's also about letting go. Surprise yourself, so you can surprise the audience. Transcendence, and very few have it in them. I think I do have it in me.
Ah, you bit me? First, many surprises, uh, coming up, but he's under something there, isn't he? Trying too hard to be perfect comes at the cost of beauty. Absolutely, I mean, human creation always has to do with imperfection. The beauty is in the imperfection, what makes each one of us unique. And he really teaches her to find her own pleasure instead of just trying to please everyone around her which allows her to become a woman and an artist.
And we watch her go through that, you say, become a woman. That's actually I guess, in some way what's universal about. This is about dance, but it's also the story about young woman growing up from a very cloistered environment. Exactly, I mean, she's really starting out, just tried to make everyone around her happy and then she has to figure out how to make herself happy. That's absolutely what everyone goes through, maturing. But it could be one of the hardest things to do. Absolutely.
Well, it is just a brilliant performance, congratulations,Thank you so much.
Good luck with everything.
Thank you. |