Barbara Hershey dances into ‘Black Swan’

Barbara Hershey describes herself as the “eleventh-hour actress” because she’s often cast in a movie at the last minute. And that’s exactly what happened with her latest film, “Black Swan,” which opens Friday.

She was about to go to London to film a TV version of Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express” when she learned she’d landed the role of Erica, the suffocating mother of Nina ( Natalie Portman), a mentally fragile prima ballerina in a Darren Aronofsky film that blends elements of dance, horror and psychological thriller.

“I think I was cast a week before they were going into production,” says the 62-year-old actress over a latté at a Santa Monica beach hotel. “They filmed Erica’s section at the end. I literally got the part and Darren said, ‘Would you stay for a few days for rehearsal?’ I said I could stay for one day and then I had to get on a plane.”

While she was in London filming “Orient Express,” she and Aronofsky communicated a lot by e-mail. “I kept them because they were really great kind of communication about the character,” says Hershey. “He asked me when I was in London to write two letters as Erica to Nina, like I had gone to visit my sister in London.”

Though Hershey gave the letters to Aronofsky, he never read them. “But as an acting exercise, it was so amazing because they just came out of me as Erica,” she notes. “It was so important to me as building this history for me and Natalie because we had to have a whole sense of history together, a symbiotic thing where you are completing each other’s sentences.”

Hershey, who is as warm and engaging as Erica is uptight and controlling in “Black Swan,” doesn’t think Erica is the “mother from hell. She is the mother in hell.”

A former ballerina who gave up her career when she became pregnant with Nina, Erica is on as shaky mental ground as her daughter. With her black hair tightly wound in a ballerina’s bun and clad in all black, she is at once protective and envious of her daughter, especially after Nina is cast as the lead in “Swan Lake.”

“One of the purposes of the character, though Darren never said this, was to be a warning as to what Nina could become — an older mirror if she didn’t pursue her dreams and take a chance no matter what it meant. She could turn into Erica.”

Hershey patterned her look after Portman. “We both had these little earrings and necklaces,” she explains. “I made my eyebrows similar to hers as much as possible. The whole movie is about reflection, perceptions and mirrors.”

The Hollywood native began acting at 17 in the 1965-66 ABC comedy “Gidget,” which starred Sally Field, and got her own series, the western “The Monroes,” on the network the following year. She made her film debut in the 1968 Doris Day movie “With Six You Get Egg Roll.”

Her first major film was Frank Perry’s 1969 drama, “Last Summer,” and then she and David Carradine, her then-lover and father of her son Tom, starred in Martin Scorsese’s second feature film, 1972’s “Boxcar Bertha,” which Roger Corman produced. Her career, though, stagnated for the most part in the 1970s. But she made a comeback in Richard Rush’s Oscar-nominated 1980 dark comedy, “The Stunt Man.” And she hasn’t stopped working since.

She earned back-to-back best actress wins at the Cannes Film Festival for 1987’s “Shy People” and 1988’s “A World Apart,” and a supporting actress Oscar nomination for Jane Campion’s 1996 version of “The Portrait of a Lady.”

Hershey reunited with Scorsese for the director’s controversial 1988 film, “The Last Temptation of Christ.” Hershey had read Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel on which the film is based at 19 and gave it to Scorsese during “Boxcar.”

“I knew during ‘Boxcar’ that he was very brilliant and very religious,” she says. “I said there’s this book you should make a film of. I would bump into him over the years, and then one day I read in the trades he was doing ‘Last Temptation of Christ.’ ”

She called her agent to get an audition as Mary Magdalene, but being cast wasn’t a given. “I auditioned for a long time because, he said later, he wanted to make sure he wasn’t giving it to me for obligatory reasons.”

Hershey pauses and smiles: “Truly, I was the best for the role.”

One role she didn’t have to fight for was that of Lee in Woody Allen’s 1986 romantic comedy, “Hannah and Her Sisters.” Hershey’s Lee was living with a painter ( Max Von Sydow) and having an affair with her sister Hannah’s ( Mia Farrow) husband ( Michael Caine).

“To me, it’s his warmest film,” she says. “I was three days having moved to New York. I moved to scare myself and because every actor at one point or another had lived in New York. I had sold my house in L.A., and after three days my agent set up a meeting with Woody.”

The two just chatted about various things for a few minutes. “I got up to leave and he handed me the script and said the part of Lee is yours if you want it,” Hershey recalls. “Talk about a welcome mat to New York with this beautiful script and beautiful character, knowing I would have the part if I wanted it.”

Hershey says her love of acting has only grown over the last 45 years. “I always loved it and I was always serious about it, but I think life is the teacher,” she says. “That is the great benefit of getting older — you get a better perspective and you get a variety of experiences that informs everything that you express.”

susan.king@latimes.com