娜塔莉·波特曼:黑天鹅背后的“乖乖女”

The “Black Swan” Plan

Nartalie Portman： I started training a year ahead of time with a great teacher， Mary Helen Bowers， who was in the New York City Ballet for 10 years. She started very basic with me， really focusing on strengthening my toes. We would do 15 minutes of just toe exercises a day to get ready for going en pointe， plus obviously ballet. And then we upped it to， you know， we added more time as we went along， more hours a day of ballet， and we added swimming. We swam a mile a day. We toned. I watched the Frederick Wiseman documentaries on ABT and Paris Opera Ballet， which were really helpful， and read a lot of autobiographies of dancers.

I tried to do mainly New York City Ballet dancers because I thought it was important to locate it in a particular culture， to have a sort of specific world， because every company is very different. So it was sort of Balanchine-era New York City Ballet that gave me the background.

It was， and， you know， it’s also you have physical limitations. You know， I have…I’m short and I have short limbs. And， you know， the Balanchine sort of City Ballet ideal is to be very long. And they had me working with a physical therapist， Sash Jairotani’s teacher， Michelle Rodriguez， who’s fantastic， who works with all the dancers in New York， to lengthen me. And she was literally just pulling my arms and opening my back and， you know， having me over a ball. I would be lying on this sort of small ball and she would just open my shoulders and open my back and do arm exercises to try and slim my arms and lengthen them.

I was given instructions to lose as much weight as I could without getting sick and， you know， was told every day sort of by the coaches and stuff that I wasn’t looking like a ballerina yet. And all of a sudden， when I really started dieting and lost a serious amount of weight， all of a sudden I started getting compliments from everyone. But it was very much like what that world is.

Behind the “Black Swan”

Robert Siegel （Host）： Natalie， you have been in the public eye since you were 11 or something like that， yes？

Natalie Portman： Right. I made my first film when I was 11. It was released when I was 12 or 13， I don’t remember， The Professional. Yeah. So I have relatively been…it’s not to the extent that the public eye exists today， I imagine， because this is pre- Us Weekly and all of those things. So I was left alone to party in private， I suppose， in my teenage years， unlike a lot of the young women today.