(Daily Mail Reporter) The ballerina who stepped in for Natalie Portman in Black Swan to be the double for moves the actress could not do has said the star performed only a minuscule amount of footwork. Sarah Lane, 27, has claimed she is the victim of a “cover-up” and movie-goers have been misled as to how much of the dancing Portman actually performed in the film.
Natalie Portman used a dance double for certain Black Swan scenes it was revealed today
‘Of the full body shots, I would say five per cent are Natalie’, the American Ballet Theatre soloist said, adding: ‘All the other shots are me.’
Sarah Lane says she performed many of the incredible dance sequences and Portman’s face was then digitally placed onto the professional dancer’s body.
Her claims to Entertainment Weekly come following Portman’s fiancé and Black Swan choreographer Benjamin Millepied saying earlier this week that Natalie had performed most of the moves in the film.
‘There are articles now talking about her dance double that are making it sound like [Lane] did a lot of the work, but really, she just did the footwork, and the fouettes, and one diagonal [phrase] in the studio’, Millepied said.
He added: ‘Honestly, 85 percent of that movie is Natalie.’
But Lane insists that is not the case and says that her work is far more significant than she is being given credit for.
‘The shots that are just her face with arms, those shots are definitely Natalie’, Lane said of the star who walked away with the Oscar for Best Actress at this year’s Academy Awards. ‘But that doesn’t show the actual dancing.’
Although Lane was not promised any particular billing in the film, she said she was disappointed to only be credited as ‘Hand Model, ‘Stunt Double’, and ‘Lady in the Lane’ for a brief walk-on part during her six week stint during the production of the film.
Contractually, Lane said there was no clause in her contract stating that she could not speak out about what went on behind the scenes although she said Black Swan producer Ari Handel did specifically tell her not to talk about the film.
‘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 or the movie, basically because of the Oscar’, Lane said bitterly.
‘It is demeaning to the profession and 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 continues to rip into Portman saying: ‘I mean, from a professional dancer’s standpoint, she doesn’t look like a professional ballet dancer at all and she can’t dance in pointe shoes.
‘And she can’t move her body, she’s very stiff’, Lane said.
But the one thing Lane is complimentary off is the amount of pounds the actress lost to portray the ballerina.
‘I do give her a lot of credit because in a year and a half she lost a lot of weight and she really tried to go method and get into a dancer’s head and really feel like a ballet dancer’, Lane said.
Portman however has been open about the use of a dancing double and did not try to hide the fact but she claims she was very involved and did a lot of the moves herself.
‘I do have a double for the complicated turning stuff,’ Portman told EW last November.
‘It was not anything I ever could have done in a year, nothing I could’ve caught up with. But I think it was just better for all of us if I did as much as possible.’
Although she has not said many kind words about the actress who is expecting her first child this Spring, Lane said she is not speaking out because of jealousy.
‘[Natalie] is an amazing actress, for sure. I know that it’s not a personal thing against me. I know that it’s just a political thing. It’s unfortunate that I kind of lost credit’, Lane added.
Natalie’s portrayal of the Black Swan was the single most talked about performance in film this year.
The 29-year-old actress, who is pregnant with her first child, also had dancer Kimberly Prosa as backup for some technical scenes.
Millepied, who is also father to her unborn child, told the Los Angeles Times of Portman’s performance: ‘It was so believable, it was fantastic, that beautiful movement quality’.
He said of the choreography: ‘[I made] things fluid and not too complicated’.
‘By getting more movement going, which in turn added to the camera movement – that is basically what I did. If we had kept things more classical, more restrained, less fluid, it would have been harder to trick the eye.’
Natalie began dancing when she was a child and talked openly about the rigorous five-hour-a-day dance training she underwent for a year before filming.
‘She definitely put her work in,’ Prosa, one of her dance doubles, told the Huffington Post.
‘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.’
