Natalie Portman reflects on what she’s learnt about life in the spotlight
Ahead of her new film, the Oscar winner talks about three decades of acting and her fresh outlook on life.
Natalie Portman is in a reflective mood. Maybe it’s the fact she’s living in a new – but at the same time, old – city, returning to Paris a decade after she first lived there and making her home in the 7th arrondissement. Or maybe it’s her new role in Fountain of Youth, a Guy Ritchie action flick, that has her thinking back on her life.
The actor shared it all with Vogue Australia, appearing on the cover of their May issue, on sale from Monday. “I’m constantly trying to recapture my youthful idealism, my youthful belief in people, my youthful passion for what I do and excitement and what lights me up,” she said in the cover interview.
“There’s something about the essence of who we are that gets tangled, as we get older, and I do think a lot of trying to be the best version of myself is trying to get back to how I was as a kid.”
Though she is nostalgic for her teenage years, Portman, 43, admitted that “I find now to be the most exciting time I’ve had so far. I hope it keeps getting better”.
Portman has been acting since she was 11, first appearing on screen in Leon: The Professional. Since then she has rarely disappeared from view, acting in almost every genre and performing every role, from space opera to romantic comedy and everything in between, playing an astronaut, the First Lady and a pop star. In 2011, aged 30, she won an Oscar as the tortured ballerina Nina in Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan.
When she was younger, she thought she would have retired from acting by this point in her career, but Portman told Vogue Australia that she is feeling newly energised by work. “I think part of it is just the magic of people creating together,” she said. “It’s really the most beautiful thing humans can do.”
The hard part, she said, is balancing the vulnerability required to be an actor with the protection needed to be a celebrity.
“I’m on set, I’m in vulnerable mode. I’m off set, I have walls around me,” Portman told Vogue Australia.
“Quite early on I learned not to discuss my private life. And just in general there are certain things not to talk about in the press, if you can’t handle what people are going to say about it. And learning how you can avoid what people are saying, too. It’s definitely not a good idea to ever read comments on your social media, or reviews of your movies or plays … That’s the wall part.
“And then the being vulnerable part requires so much trust of people that you work with, so much interiority. That’s where it combines, you have to really go inside yourself for both. To be strong enough to withstand all the terrible things people will say about you requires a lot of inner resilience.”
Vogue Australia’s May issue is on sale from Monday, May 5.
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