How did Natalie Portman's dream role almost derail her entire career?
And how'd the actress bounce back to win an Oscar a few years later?
Natalie Portman was quite the nomad during her childhood. She didn't just
move from neighborhood to neighborhood or state to state, she had already crossed
the Atlantic before she turned 5 years old. Portman told Interview Magazine,
"I was born in Israel, in Jerusalem,
and when I was three, we moved to Washington. When I was seven, we moved to Connecticut,
and then, when I was nine, we moved to New York where we've lived ever since."
By all accounts, Portman had a happy childhood,
but there was one thing she often felt she was missing: siblings. She elaborated,
"I'm an only child. Which is kind of bad, because having a brother or sister
is like another form of friendship. That's something I've missed out on."
"It's a lonely house you got, you don't mind me saying."
However, Portman added that the silver lining to this was having so much of
her mother's attention, which helped her become the person she is today.
Unlike so many other child actors, the decision to become an actress wasn't
thrust upon Natalie Portman. Instead, she knew from the age of 11 that acting was her calling,
so she began pursuing a career in Hollywood. She recalled in an interview with Variety —
"That's when I started. I feel that there is something around that time where you do
have an instinct about what you really love. I don't know where it came from,
because there's no one in my family who was ever a performer."
"I came from such a serious, academic family, where the only thing that was
acceptable was to be very literate and educated. You become a professor or a doctor or a lawyer."
Even after Portman had achieved notable success, her father suggested that she go to
graduate school. However, Portman was already in love with the craft, so she stuck with it.
Once Natalie Portman decided she wanted to become an actress, it didn't take her long
to catapult to fame. At age 12, she starred in her first major motion picture, "Léon:
The Professional," a film about a troubled young girl who befriends a hit man. While the movie
has stirred up a fair bit of controversy over the years, Portman sees it as a story about
two friends who find each other at their worst points and share a deep connection.
"Leon, I think I'm kind of falling in love with you."
Portman gave her take on the film to Interview, saying —
"It's [...] about two people who by themselves are so unhappy,
but when they're together they're very, very happy just because they have each
other's companionship. They're taking care of each other. They're nurturing each other."
As for what advice the adult Portman would give to the 12-year-old version of herself?
She mused to Marie Claire —
"Don't try to please everyone. It took me a long time to move past
that and focus on myself instead of worrying about other people."
In 1999, Natalie Portman was cast in what should have been a dream role: She landed the part of
Queen Padmé Amidala in "Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace," as well as its two follow-ups.
Unfortunately, instead of defining Portman's career, the film almost killed it after the heavy
criticism the "Star Wars" prequels were subjected to by the public. She confessed to Empire —
"It was hard. It was a bummer because it felt like people were so excited about
new ones and then to have people feel disappointed [was hard]."
Some "Star Wars" fans seemed to assume that the young actress was phoning in her performance.
"You assume too much."
The critiques of Portman's acting had a pretty profound impact on her budding career,
as well. She shared to New York Magazine —
"'Star Wars' had come out [...] and everyone thought I was a horrible actress. I was in
the biggest-grossing movie of the decade, and no director wanted to work with me."
Fortunately, Portman had a friend in director Mike Nichols,
who vouched for her and recommended that she be cast in "Cold Mountain."
After the historical drama reaffirmed her acting chops, she was once again in demand.
A Hollywood acting career does not require a college degree, or really any formal education.
But that didn't deter Natalie Portman from pursuing a world-class education, as she
started attending Harvard University in 1999 and graduated with a degree in psychology in 2003.
During Portman's tenure at Harvard,
she studied alongside many other influential people. She told Rolling Stone in 2002 —
"My peers here are pretty frickin' accomplished. It's just a different
kind of accomplishment I've had that they don't necessarily see as above what they've done."
Predictably, however, Portman had to be discerning in case some people wanted
to be friends with her for the wrong reasons. She continued —
"But you also have a lot of ambitious people who do want to rub shoulders.
You've got to be wary of that."
In 2011, Natalie Portman celebrated a career milestone when she won the Academy Award for
Best Actress for her role in the 2010 Darren Aronofsky thriller "Black Swan."
Of course, Portman had to do a ridiculous amount of training for the film,
which was extremely physically demanding. She revealed to Vanity Fair —
"It was about a year of ballet preparation that sort of ramped up as the film got
closer. It started out for a couple of hours a day, then five hours a day,
then more like eight hours and it was very intense but really fun, too."
Portman especially loved working with Aronofsky, who allowed her to flex her creative muscles
in addition to her actual muscles. In the same interview, she elaborated that
the director would even invite her to retake scenes with her own artistic interpretations.
Widely celebrated across Hollywood, "Black Swan" was nominated for five Oscars in total.
An Academy Award wasn't the only prize Natalie Portman won from working on "Black Swan." While
filming the movie, she also met her husband: the French choreographer Benjamin Millepied,
who choreographed the film and played the Prince alongside Portman's Swan.
This budding romance made the experience even more intense for Portman,
who treasures that special time so much that it's hard for her to even put it into words.
"I was in, like, dreamland, so, it was pretty, it didn't seem — it seemed pretty fun."
Portman added that the depth of the pair's connection wasn't instantaneous,
but that once they got to know each other, it became super clear.
Despite the intensity of filming,
Portman had a generally great time in the process of making "Black Swan." She gushed to US Weekly —
"It was really special and making it was really wonderful and so fun. It was really incredible."
It wasn't long after meeting Benjamin Millepied that Natalie Portman became
pregnant with her first child, Aleph, who she gave birth to in 2011. Unsurprisingly,
that prompted Portman to make some changes in her life, and she began taking on roles that allowed
her to have the time she needed to be a wife and mother. She explained to the Los Angeles Times —
"It kind of ups the stakes of what you want to do because it's time
away from your kid [...] I want to be so passionate and committed to what I'm doing;
it feels like an incredible use of my time."
Portman gave birth to her second child Amalia in 2017, making her the mother of both a boy
and a girl. It was an adjustment that made Portman super conscious about how
gender roles were imposed. She told Vogue Australia that she wants to make sure she
doesn't imprint any ideas about gender onto her children that are harmful or outdated.
In 2015, Natalie Portman added another title to her extensive resume by making her major motion
picture directorial debut. Titled "A Tale of Love and Darkness," the Hebrew-language film is
about the early life of Israeli writer Amos Oz, who came of age in Israel in the '40s and '50s.
Portman also had a starring role in the movie as Amos' mother Fania. Naturally,
Portman's long career in Hollywood prepared her for this new position.
"Having worked in film since I was 11, it's sort of a film that I had in life."
She told W Magazine that directing came fairly naturally to her,
but there were curveballs along the way.
The toughest part of the directorial learning curve for Portman was learning to be comfortable
in her authority by taking charge and giving clear guidance. She continued —
"It definitely feels like a female thing to me, how I wasn't comfortable being
the boss right away. It didn't come naturally to me, I had to learn it."
For her transformation into the Mighty Thor in "Thor: Love and Thunder,"
Natalie Portman worked up a serious sweat with her impressive training routine. According to
an interview with Variety, Portman was all in when it came to working out. She revealed —
"It was really fun getting to become stronger,
working with a really great trainer, Naomi Pendergast, and she was incredible."
Similarly, while chatting with Us Weekly, Pendergast spoke about the work that went
into the Marvel character's transformation from Jane Foster into the hammer-wielding superhero,
saying they trained hard for the better part of a year.
Pendergast added that the star showed serious dedication,
showing up for five training sessions per week. The trainer added that Portman never
missed a single session throughout their training period. According to the trainer,
the pair focused on building up Portman's arms and abdominal muscles. Additionally, the duo
also spent time working on stability and agility, since the actress had to perform various stunts
that required a lot of movement. Pendergast was very impressed with the final results, adding —
"I was also really pleased she got through the challenging stunt process without any injuries."