Whetting the Appetite

This article about Black Swan accomplishes the difficult task of piquing my interest while not giving away too many details about the film. Here's some insight into the grueling work Natalie did during the shoot.... (NYT)

Nina, the young dancer Ms. Portman plays, lives a virtually monastic life, sharing a cramped Manhattan apartment with her overbearing mother (played by Barbara Hershey) and venturing forth only for company classes and rehearsals. And this, as Ms. Portman told it, was her existence too during the making of “Black Swan.”

“Basically,” she said, “I didn’t do anything except work. There was no, like, meeting up with friends for dinner or going to the movies. We’d do 16-hour days, then I’d go home and work out, because I had to stay in shape, and I’d prepare for the next day’s scenes and then get maybe five hours of sleep. It was really, really extreme.”