Natalie Portman, a movie star for over 30 years, doesn’t think the public knows her as well as they think they might.
In a new conversation with actress Jenna Ortega published in Interview this week, Portman said that as a child actor, she was “really sexualised,” which she felt “very scared by.”
It caused her to develop an outward persona as a strategy to shield herself.
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“And I felt like my way of protecting myself was to be like, ‘I’m so serious. I’m so studious. I’m smart, and that’s not the kind of girl you attack.’ I was like, if I create this image of myself, I’ll be left alone,” she said.
The Oscar-winner added that she reasoned at the time, “if I create this image of myself, I’ll be left alone. It shouldn’t be a thing, but it worked.”
Portman said that this conception of her has led to a “disconnect” in how she actually can be “stupid and silly in real life, and people thinking that I’m some really serious bookish person.”
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Portman even told Ortega that in real life, “I’m not a particularly private person,” adding “I’ll tell you anything.”
In public, however, “it was so clear early on that if you tell people how private you are, your privacy gets respected a lot more.”
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Ortega admitted, “I don’t really know what that line is. I guess I’m still figuring that out.”
Portman’s career took off when she starred in Luc Besson’s The Professional at 13 years old.
She played a hard-boiled orphan in New York City who becomes targeted by gangsters, ultimately gaining protection from an Italian hitman (Jean Reno).
Portman is next set to star in Fountain of Youth, a movie premiering on AppleTV+ next month.
She will also be costarring opposite Ortega in upcoming film The Gallerist.
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