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 sexualized,” which she felt “very scared by.” It caused her to develop an outward persona as a strategy to shield herself.
“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.”
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.”
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.”