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“It’s definitely a relief to be out of the phase
where you’re supposed to be adorable,” says
Natalie Portman one recent summer morn-
ing, after she’s rushed her two kids out the
door. The actress entered the Hollywood sys-
tem at the tender age of 12, when she filmed
Luc Besson’s The Professional, and now, at 38,
finally feels she’s aged out of a certain kind
of role—wide-eyed and whimsical yet sur-
prisingly perceptive—that she’s played with
more depth and shimmer than most. Who
can forget Portman in Garden State, her 2004
movie with writer-director-actor Zach Braff,
holding her giant headphones and telling Braff
in her character’s Jersey accent, “The Shins,
you know ’em? You gotta hear this one song.
It’ll change your life, I swear.”
“It certainly is stifling to be the one who’s
enacting someone else’s idea of how a young
woman should behave,” Portman says. “I’ve
seen a real change [in the industry] since I was
- But not a total change; you still see those
roles of just being a dream girl or whatever
some person wants you to enact.”
In the twisted ballet thriller Black Swan,
Portman threw that dream girl under the
bus—or the barre. It was a spectacular way
to bid farewell to Cute School, by burning it
down and getting an Oscar to boot. She also
met her husband, dancer and choreographer
Benjamin Millepied, on the set.
Today, Portman is focused on different
kinds of parts. Or, more accurately, more nu-
anced parts are now being routinely offered
to her: “I’m into women who are interesting
to watch because they’re as confusing, and
confused, as we are,” she says. “That’s my fa-
vorite character to play: the one who messes
up, but you understand what’s going on to
make her do that.”
In this fall’s Lucy in the Sky, Portman por-
trayed the psychological unraveling of Lucy
Cola, inspired by the real-life story of NASA
astronaut Lisa Nowak and her romantic en-
tanglement with fellow astronaut William
Oefelein. Lucy in the Sky, directed by Fargo
showrunner Noah Hawley, posits that after
her trip into space, Cola was thrown into such
an existential crisis, with no real insight or
coping skills, that she was driven to the point
of madness. What’s particularly noteworthy
about Cola’s story is that the bigger questions
about what we’re doing here, and what “here”
even is, have usually been considered the ter-
ritory of men, especially in film.
Cola, it’s important to say, is not the most
honorable character. She has an affair with
her colleague (played by Jon Hamm, at his
Hammiest charming-but-broken-man role
ever), then engages in criminal activity against
him and casts a fellow astronaut (Zazie Beetz)
as her romantic rival. She’s neither a hero nor
an antihero. She’s a woman sent spiraling into
the deep of her own life, which is why, Port-
man says, her story is a feminist one. “When
you show a woman being a complete human
being, with the bad as well as the good, that’s
feminist. It’s a humanist way of seeing people.”
Another layer to Portman’s evolutionary
relationship with Hollywood is her involve-
ment with the Time’s Up movement. Before
2017, her friendships were almost all outside
the film industry, save for a handful of actors
like Rashida Jones. The isolation was never
clearer than when she was in a crowd of her
peers. “When I went to the Oscars in 2009, I
was just standing there, and felt totally scared
and intimidated and lonely by the whole ex-
perience,” she remembers. “And then going
to the Golden Globes in 2018, it felt like going
to a party with friends. We were all like, ‘Oh,
this is what it feels like; this is why it’s fun for
other people.’”NO LONGER
THE DOE-EYED
INGENUE,
NATALIE PORTMAN
HAS GRADUATED
TO A FULL-
FLEDGED WOMAN
OF COMPLEXITY.
BY MARGARET
WAPPLER. STYLED
BY CHARLES
VARENNE.NATALIE PORTMAN
Time’s Up not only has extended her friend-
ship circle with industry folk—including actors
Reese Witherspoon (a producer on Lucy in the
Sky), Brie Larson, and America Ferrera, and
director Angela Robinson—but has spawned
a powerful network for trading experiences.
“If we don’t talk to each other, we can’t
share, we can’t get information, we can’t get
angry and organize together. It’s actually really
important to talk,” Portman says. “Something
we’ve been talking about is sharing salary
details with each other, because right now
it’s such a taboo. It’s actually a real way that
we can help each other, to be like, ‘Hey, this is
what I get paid. This is how I negotiated this.’”
Portman made the news earlier this year
when she publicly contradicted Moby’s ver-
sion of events in his memoir that the two dated
when she was 20 and he was 33. (After a mans-
plaining post, the musician eventually apolo-
gized.) She doesn’t want to be drawn into the
subject anymore (“It was weird,” she says with
a laugh), but it was a relief to many women
that she broke from the usual reticence to talk
about her personal life to correct the record.
For all her understated, luminous intensity,
there’s tangible proof that Portman is gaining
more confidence in her own voice, just in time
for Hollywood to embrace its full, grown-up
power. The reputation of the serious young
actress who went to Harvard will follow her,
but there are worse things to live down. She
explained the origin of “Serious Natalie” in a
speech at the 2018 Women’s March: She dove
into that persona as protection against an in-
dustry sexualizing her when she was so young.
These days, her public life doesn’t have
to reflect or deflect anything she’s doing on-
screen. In fact, she’s emboldened to cast the
two as distinctly different: “If I’m going to
spend time being another person, I’d rather
it be a completely different experience than
what my life is like.” ▪