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women so much as he’s excited by going after the extremes of perfection, beauty and art. He wants to see the
dancers he chooses blossom into the ultimate expression of himself, and he drives them very, very hard.”
To play Thomas with an authentic air, Cassel dove into research, studying the lives and magnetic
personalities of the world’s great choreographers, from Balanchine to Baryshnikov. He was further inspired by
observing the film’s choreographer, renowned dancer Benjamin Millepied of the New York City Ballet.
“Seeing the way Benjamin interacted with the dancers, and the way he carried himself, gave me a lot of
interesting input,” notes Cassel.
Rounding out the main cast are two Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe®-winning
actresses: Winona Ryder as Beth, the company’s legendary star dancer who finds herself rapidly falling from
grace and Barbara Hershey as Nina’s mother, Erica, who both shields and smothers her daughter.
For Ryder’s character, Beth is key to Nina’s story as a prophesy of what awaits her in the future. “Beth
has been the star for awhile but now she’s at an age where, in one swoop, she gets fired and dumped by her
lover, the ballet’s Artistic Director,” explains Ryder. “It brings up the whole question of what dancers have to
endure, the tragedy and unfairness of how short their careers are.”
She continues, “I think it also deals more generally with the quest for perfection, because what dancers
have to go through to perfect their performances is beyond anything an audience ever sees. Beth has worked on
her art since she was a child and suddenly, she comes to a place where everything she’s worked so hard to
develop has just broken her down. And she doesn’t handle it well.”
Aronofsky says of Ryder, “Winona was fantastic for the role because she is such a superstar herself. I
think the audience will really connect to her as the famous prima ballerina who is being pushed out as Nina
steps in to replace her.”
Hershey, too, was entranced by BLACK SWAN and her unusual role. “I’m sure some people will look
at Erica as the mother from hell but I see her as a mother in hell, which is a big difference,” says Hershey. “I
think she’s pretty tortured. For everything she does, there’s this opposite thing happening at the same time. She
loves her daughter yet there’s an obsession to it. She wants her to succeed but at the same time she knows her
fragile mental state. She’s terribly jealous of her daughter, yet she wants the world for her. She wants Nina to
fly -- but she doesn’t want her to leave.”
Both women were captivated by Aronofsky’s techniques for working with actors. “I wasn’t available
for rehearsal because I was working on another film in England at the time,” recalls Hershey, “so Darren had
me do something I thought was so brilliant. He asked me to write two letters to Nina as my character. So,
while I was working on this other project, I was already thinking of the relationship between Nina and her
mother. I started writing and the character just started speaking. Then Darren took these letters and gave them
to Natalie at strategic moments.”
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