Natalie Portman is a toe-shoe-in for an Oscar nomination for her performance as a ballerina in Black Swan, and she worked her ass off for it. Or rather she worked her ass bigger.

Working out eight hours at a time. Swimming a mile a day. Dancing despite bruised feet, aching muscles, and a displaced rib. Natalie Portman didn’t take the easy road in preparing to play ambitious ballerina Nina Sayers in Black Swan. But the 29-year-old actress says there was no other option. “So many of the emotional scenes happen while she’s dancing that there was no real way of getting around it,” explains Portman, whose character suffers a mind-bending nervous breakdown while rehearsing to dance the lead in a glitzy production of Swan Lake.

[Entertainment Weekly, print edition, November 19, 2010]

Although Portman did use a double for some of the more complicated choreography, she still had to look the part of a ballerina.

Portman says that not eating — or, rather, eating very little — is an essential part of a dancer’s lifestyle. “I’m a very short person, and you’re supposed to look very long,” she explains. “And you don’t have the bulk on you — which is, like, sick. The whole thing, I’m aware that it’s sick.”

…For the record, not all of Portman got smaller while training. “Dancers, even when they’re really frailly skinny, have a very strong butt. So Mary Helen [former New York City Ballet company member Mary Helen Bowers] did a lot of work on my butt,” she giggles. The result? “Definitely a huge, huge, um…change.”

[Entertainment Weekly, print edition, November 19, 2010]

Playing the part also dispelled any illusions Natalie had about the glamour of being a ballerina.

“[Being a dancer] was a childhood dream. Then when I got to try it, it kind of erased the illusion that ballet is this easy, beautiful, light thing. It’s quite the opposite. It takes discipline and hard work and pain….It’s more competitive [than Hollywood]. It’s smaller, so there are even fewer spots to fill. And it takes physical perfection.”

[Us Weekly, print edition, December 6, 2010]

Off screen, Portman is quietly dating choreographer Benjamin Millepied, 33, who can currently be seen in print ads for Gap.

Director Darren Aronofsky, who may also get an Oscar nod, recently lost his partner Rachel Weisz to James Bond actor Daniel Craig.

I doubt I’ll see this film; it’s not my cup of tea, but (Star Wars notwithstanding) I think Natalie is a good actress and seems relatively grounded for a child-actor-turned-movie-star. Plus she’s vegetarian and launched a line of vegan shoes, which is cool.

Black Swan opens December 3.