Natalie Portman: From child star to mother of two — ‘I keep pinching myself’

While you were busy doing other things Natalie Portman somehow became a veteran of the entertainment industry. It is more than 30 years since she made her big-screen debut as a juvenile in Léon: The Professional. She won an Oscar for Black Swan in 2010. Now, after a few years away from the screen, she is back as a version of Mighty Thor in Taika Waititi’s latest Marvel flick.

“I was so surprised and excited by Taika and Marvel deciding to cast me at 40 years old — and a mother of two, and five-three,” she says, referring to her height. (She has since turned 41.) “That’s not because I don’t see myself that way. It’s because I don’t expect anyone else to see me that way — because of the experiences I’ve had.”

She has had some experiences all right. A lot has changed on her journey from Léon to Thor: Love and Thunder. Born in Israel as Natalie Hershlag, Portman was spotted by a Revlon agent when she was just 10 years old. She declined the offer to take up modelling but was sufficiently intrigued to dip a toe in acting. The Star Wars prequels elevated her profile, and she has been a celebrity ever since. She has spoken frankly about the inappropriate — sometimes downright disturbing — attention she received from fans when still a child. In recent years, following the #MeToo convulsions, Hollywood has enjoyed patting its back about improved conditions for women. Have things really got that much better?

I am always pinching myself that I get to still do this...I feel very lucky that I’ve had these different opportunities. I’ve always wanted to try different things and keep challenging myself

“I think there has been a rapid change because of the Me Too and Time’s Up movements,” Portman tells me. “I think the dialogue has changed a lot. I think there’s also a lot farther that we need to go. Everyone is much more conscious about representation — about how we’re representing about whom we’re representing and about who’s telling those stories. And that has also been pushed forward a lot by journalists. But it’s annoying to have to have the conversations still.”

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As you will have gathered, Portman is no fool. Dressed today in a yellow thing that does something complicated over her left shoulder, she throws herself into answers with more enthusiasm than a star of her calibre need bother with. Like Jodie Foster before her, she did not let early success get in the way of education. In between shooting the Star Wars prequels, she found time to take a degree at no less prestigious an Ivy League institution than Harvard. She could perhaps have escaped all this madness and drifted into academia. There are upsides to the movie business, but if she’d become a boffin she wouldn’t need to waste sunny afternoons talking to me.

“I am always pinching myself that I get to still do this,” she says. “I feel very lucky that I’ve had these different opportunities. I’ve always wanted to try different things and keep challenging myself. I think that’s probably been helpful in getting to continue working — because, if you are changing and growing then audiences see you change and grow. It’s not, like, ‘Oh, I’ve seen that before.’”

As she has grown the business has shifted around her. Few periods in the history of the moving image have seen so much flux. That was already happening before Covid, as streaming services blurred the lines and digital production opened new opportunities. Twenty years ago, if a movie star of Portman’s standing moved into television, analysts would conclude that her career was on the wane but nobody blinked when she signed up to star in Alma Har’el’s upcoming adaptation of Laura Lippman’s mystery Lady in The Lake for Apple TV+. That’s how the game is now played.

“Film has changed a lot,” she agrees. “I’ve worked less over the last decade, mainly because I’ve had two kids. I’ve wanted to balance acting with being present for them and their lives. I feel very lucky to have the ability to do that. But the film world has changed in many interesting ways. With all these streamers, there’s a lot more access. If you’re a kid in a small town you probably have a lot more access to a variety of older films.”

Everything Taika does doesn’t seem like it should work. Look at JoJo Rabbit. How do all of these things fit together and cohere?

There is arguably too much new “content” available to the streaming fan in their home. It requires an enormous amount of energy merely to select the evening’s viewing.

“There’s a fine line between what’s a film and what’s a series,” Portman says. “Of course, some of the most exciting art of our time and characters of our time have come out in series — where there’s more space to tell them. So it’s been really exciting getting to work on one for the first time.”

There is no question what medium Thor: Love and Thunder belongs to. The 29th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is cinema on the scale of a continental invasion: loud, brash, unyielding. Yet there is original thinking at play. As in Thor: Ragnarok, his previous film for the MCU, Taika Waititi, Oscar-winning director of Jojo Rabbit, pitches the film as an epic comedy, but there is also a reach towards less frivolous tones. Jane Foster, Portman’s character, is undergoing treatment for cancer. Working such a plot into Carry on Thor was a risky move.

“I think all of us involved had personal experiences with people facing the same kind of challenges Jane faces,” she says. “And I think it was very important to respect that experience and learn the real experience of people. And we did talk about it a lot to people who were going through similar things and wanted to take agency in their own lives — wanted to make decisions for themselves.”

That is very much how Taika Waititi operates.

“Everything Taika does doesn’t seem like it should work. Look at JoJo Rabbit. How do all of these things fit together and cohere? On our set, we’d often all look at each other, Taika included, and be, like, ‘Oh, I’m not sure this fits into the same movie as we’ve been making.’ But that’s the magic of his direction.”

What a journey. What would that wee girl who made Léon make of where her older self ended up? She became Thor, for Pete’s sake.

“I think she’d be very surprised,” Portman says. “I guess she’d think it’s cool. My kids are now that age. My son is my age when I started working. And he’s really into the fact that I’m a superhero now.”

She laughs merrily.

“I would guess that I would have been too.”

Thor: Love and Thunder is on general release