The 64-year-old New York native spent about three months training to master the technique of utilizing the jagged edges of a figure skate’s front blade, but neither he nor his co-stars were able to nail Pamchenko, who actually won the championship.
“The design is that I throw her, I stand still, and I catch her,” he detailed to Entertainment Weekly in 2014. “And the only way I could do that is if she’s Supergirl and she flies back to me. So that makes no sense at all.”
Professional figure skaters Sharon Carrs and John Denton were used as body doubles, but it took a lot of movie magic to create the moves.
“When I was spinning her around, it wasn’t actually Moira, it was a mannequin,” Sweeney pointed out. “This worked pretty well, except the wig kept flying off the mannequin. So you start thinking things like, ‘How can I keep the wig on the mannequin?’ Rather than worrying about the impossibility of the trick. ”
Of course, there are two things he’s good at. One is a lover, and the other is skating. Well, we’ve barely skimmed the surface of the movie’s behind-the-scenes secrets, so buckle up those metaphorical skates.
