Natalie Portman on Black Swan | Interview

At 29, Natalie Portman has already been in the business a long time. A child star at 13 in Luc Besson's Léon, she became a sci-fi pin-up as Queen Amidala in the 'Star Wars' prequels, but at 18 went to Harvard to study psychology, announcing she'd 'rather be smart than a movie star'. She's certainly achieved her first aim – she speaks multiple languages, she lobbies for a microfinance organisation – but she is also undeniably a movie star, even if some of her recent flicks (Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium, The Other Boleyn Girl) have been a bit limp. Yet her latest, Black Swan, glides gracefully into the UK atop a tidal wave of excitement, with a Golden Globe nomination for Portman and most likely an Oscar nod later this month.

The film, by The Wrestler director Darren Aronofsky, is an intense psychological thriller set in a New York ballet company, with Portman playing the uptight Nina, a dancer who lives with her controlling mother in a cosseted world where pink fluffiness meets steely determination. Desperate to land the lead in Swan Lake, which demands she inhabit the dual roles of the white and black swans, the virginal Nina struggles to get in touch with her passionate inner 'black swan', teetering on the brink of sanity in the process.

Black Swan has ruffled a few feathers in the dance community, with its bitchy, bulimic dancers and predatory artistic director – stereotypes the industry is at pains to dispel. In its defence it's hardly meant to be a documentary, although it does effectively capture the physical grit of life as a ballet dancer. While Portman had a dance double for some scenes, she makes a credible on-screen ballerina, and it took a year of gruelling training to get there, dancing for up to eight hours a day and dislocating a rib while she was at it (and then still dancing). She worked with some of the industry’s best coaches, as well as New York City Ballet choreographer Benjamin Millepied, who became her boyfriend. A week after our interview it was announced that the pair are not only engaged, but Portman is pregnant.

Since she's a true pro, though, there's no hint of this when we meet. She is consistently bright eyed and interested, even if she might have heard a few of the questions before. Up close her beauty is pristine. Black Swan – a melodramatic meditation on perfectionism –seems to have a star who’s almost too damn perfect herself.

The atmosphere of the film is incredibly claustrophobic, with the camera following you closely all the time. What was it like to film?
'I think that's one of the things that's very different about Black Swan as a dance film. Dance is so often filmed full stage and from the audience it looks so light and beautiful and delicate and you get up close and they're pouring with sweat, they're completely out of breath, they sometimes have to ice [injuries] immediately off-stage. There's so much pain, gory pain. It's great having that access to the sort of underside of the ballet world.'

One of the things that makes the film so tense is the sound design – your breathing is really vivid.
'We did a whole breathing soundtrack, a whole run of the film where I went into a sound studio and just breathed with it, because they couldn't mic me when I was dancing.'

The film shows a ballet world as ultra competitive, but surely Hollywood's not so different?
'There are definitely similar types of pressures, but the acting world is bigger. In the ballet world there are so few principal positions. Also, the expiration date on an actor is because of the society we're in, rather than the physical ability. For dancers you’re really done at 40 – there's a physical limitation on how long you can work.'