Natalie Portman’s 'Black Swan' ballet double speaks out

Ballerina Sarah Lane wonders why no one is allowed to know that she played several of the dance scenes of Natalie Portman in Black Swan. Lane was prohibited to do interviews and she is only mentioned as an extra in the closing credits. Portman also kept her mouth shut about Lane when she accepted her Oscar for Best Actress.

In an interview with Dance Magazine Lane speaks about her frustration. Her main concern is the diminishing of the art form: ‘Do people really believe that it takes only one year to make a ballerina?’

According to Lane, who is a famous ballet dancer of the American Ballet Theater, there was a video of special effects that was going around the internet. In this video, a certain crucial three seconds has been deleted. ‘Toward the end of the video, the Black Swan starts a manège of piqué turns from a distance,’ Lane explains. ‘When she gets close enough to see her face, you could see a my face being swiped over by Natalie Portman’s face.’

‘The day before the Oscars, I looked at this video on several sites so that I could show this moment of face replacement to my son, who’s a film guy. And it wasn’t there. It had been deleted.’

At the Oscars, Portman thanked about 20 people, but Sarah Lane’s name was not among them. ‘I wonder, was this Portman’s forgetfulness in the heat of the moment? Or was this omission, and the deletion from the video, planned by the studio's publicity machine?’

Portmans fiancée, Benjamin Millepied also decided to speak up about the accusations towards Portman: ‘Nathalies ballet double just did the footwork, and the fouettés,’ he says to the Los Angeles Times. ‘Honestly, 85% of that movie is Natalie.’