Isabella Boylston is Jennifer Lawrence's dance double in Red Sparrow
'I really had to try not to get injured': Prima ballerina who starred as Jennifer Lawrence's dance double for Red Sparrow details her grueling 12-hour days on set with the 'hilarious' actress
Jennifer Lawrence got in top shape to play a ballerina in Red Sparrow and trained with a coach to acquire the grace and posture of a true ballet dancer — but only a professional with decades of experience could nail the trickiest scenes.
So the producers called on Isabella Boylston, 31, a principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre in New York City, to take on the role of Jennifer's dance double in the newly released thriller.
Jennifer, 27, plays Dominika Egorova, a talented Russian ballerina who suffers a career-ending injury and is then forced to become a spy after a brutal, sadistic training course, in Francis Lawrence's latest film.
But while Jennifer has spoken at length about how she got into tip top shape ahead of the movie, spending three months training for the dance scenes, while also putting herself on a strict diet, when it came to pulling off the more complex ballet moves, she left it to the professionals — namely, Isabella.
The dancer, from Sun Valley, Idaho, has been dancing since the age of three. She relocated to New York City to join the American Ballet Theatre when she was 18.
Her repertoire includes some of the most iconic ballets, with Isabella having danced the parts of Odette and Odile in Swan Lake, the title part in Giselle, Gamzatti in La Bayadere, the Nutcracker's Sugarplum Fairy, and the pas de deux as well as the mazurka in Les Sylphides.
With Red Sparrow, Isabella is making her big screen debut. She traveled to Budapest, Hungary, along with the rest of the crew—including, naturally, Jennifer—and worked on set for up to 12 hours a day.
'I think they were really committed to being as accurate as possible, so they wanted a principal dancer, a real ballerina,' she told WWD.
'Justin Peck, the choreographer, is a good friend of mine—we had worked together before on our own film that premiered at Tribeca Film Festival a couple of years ago. He called me and was like, "I think you'd be a great fit for this project." And I was like, Francis Lawrence? Jen Lawrence? Sign me up.'
The long shooting days, however, proved to be a challenging even for Isabella, who is used to rehearsing up to nine hours a day.
'You'd wake up at 4 am to get into hair and makeup, then you'll do 10 takes of the same thing and sit around and your muscles get so cold. It was basically trying not to get injured with all the stop and go,' she said.
Still, Isabella managed to get to know Jennifer better, and referred to the actress as 'super real and hilarious'.
As challenging as filming might have been, Isabella is confident that professional ballet dancers have what it takes to tackle any obstacles that might come their way.
'Dancers are so disciplined and tough that they can be successful in whatever endeavor they choose following their ballet careers,' she told Interview Magazine.
The dancer, who has reached the highest ranks of her discipline, admitted she initially had doubts about how beneficial it would for her to work as someone's body double, when she is usually in the spotlight.
'At first I did have [some] misgivings about being a double,' she said. 'Because it's like, I've worked so hard to get to the top of my field.'
However, she appears to have enjoyed the experience and added: 'If you need a ballerina for a movie, call me!'
In that, her experience differs from her fellow American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Sarah Lane, who was Natalie Portman's dance double in Black Swan.
After the release of the psychological thriller, for which Natalie won the Best Actress Academy Award, Sarah and others in the ballet community felt that the ballerina hadn't received enough recognition for her work in the film, with the spotlight being kept on Natalie instead.
As a child, Isabella wasn't just a gifted dancer—Isabella, whose family once lived in Boulder, Colorado, was also a competitive skier, as she told Just Jared.
Her impressive resume also includes the ability of speaking two foreign languages, French and Swedish, with the latter being her mother's native language.
Isabella, who previously dated French dancer Benjamin Millepied before he met—and eventually married—Natalie Portman, met her husband, financier Daniel Shin, at a Cinco de Mayo party. She now lives with him in Brooklyn.
Besides their collaboration in Red Sparrow, Isabella has another interest in common with Jennifer: both have a documented solid appetite.
In order to fuel her training, Isabella often relies on one of her favorite foods, pasta, which she eats most days, sometimes even for breakfast.
She once kept a food diary for a week for the Grub Street Diet column, documenting a late breakfast of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and creamed spinach.
'You might not feel that great dancing after fried chicken, but it doesn't bother me! I'm not too sensitive,' she wrote at the time.
