Highlights
- Natalie Portman doesn’t think children should work in showbiz due to the demanding nature of acting and the difficulty of balancing it with everyday life.
- Portman struggled with being bullied in school and feeling overly sexualized in her earlier roles, which had a negative impact on her self-perception and work choices.
- While Léon: The Professional kickstarted Portman’s career, she feels embarrassed by some aspects of the movie and acknowledges its cringey elements when watching it now.
Natalie Portman began acting at age twelve. Since she first starred in the 1994 action movie Léon: The Professional, she’s gone on to become one of Hollywood’s biggest stars. Over the years, she’s appeared in many popular films such as Closer, V for Vendetta, the Star Wars prequel trilogy, and Black Swan, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Unlike other Hollywood stars, who encourage their kids to follow in their footsteps, Portman has admitted that she wouldn’t want her children to go into acting. Although a lot of her success came because of the roles she took when she was still a kid, the actress revealed that she doesn’t think any child should work in showbiz. Her reasoning makes a lot of sense.
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Natalie Portman Doesn’t Believe That Acting Is A Job For Children
Natalie Portman has always opted to keep her kids, Aleph, 12, and Amalia, 6, out of the spotlight. Despite this, the actress allowed her children to make a small cameo in Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) alongside Chris Hemsworth, Christina Bale, and Taika Waititi’s children.
More recently, Portman revealed she wouldn’t want her kids to follow in her footsteps. When she was asked whether she’s ever encouraged her children to get into the showbiz industry, the actress responded, “I would not encourage young people to go into this.” She added, “I don’t mean ever; I mean as children.”
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The actress then explained how lucky she was growing up and how that is not always the case for child actors.
“I feel it was almost an accident of luck that I was not harmed, also combined with very overprotective, wonderful parents,” she admitted.
“I’ve heard too many bad stories to think that any children should be part of it.” Portman also pointed out that acting is a demanding job and balancing that, along with school and everyday life can be extremely hard for kids.
“I don’t believe that kids should work. I think kids should play and go to school,” she concluded.
Natalie Portman Struggled Growing Up As A Child Actor
Over the years, Natalie Portman has opened up about her struggles growing up in the entertainment industry. For instance, in 2020, she told Drew Barrymore that she was bullied at school when she was younger.
“I read this thing about how you didn’t have an easy time in school because you would go out to movies and then come back and just have an awkward time with the other kids at school,” Barrymore said, adding that she went through the same thing growing up.
“I mean I think people get bullied for all sorts of reasons and that’s a lucky reason to be bullied for because you are doing something that you love,” Portman said. “I do think that that sort of creates your empathy like being on that side of the teasing certainly makes you never want to make anyone feel like that ever again.”
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However, bullying was far from Portman’s biggest problem growing up. The actress admitted to feeling overly sexualized in her earlier roles.
“I was definitely aware of the fact that I was being portrayed … as this ‘Lolita’ figure,” she said. “Being sexualized as a child, I think took away from my own sexuality because it made me afraid, and it made me [feel] like the way I could be safe was to be like, ‘I’m conservative,’ and ‘I’m serious and you should respect me,’ and ‘I’m smart,’ and ‘don’t look at me that way.’”
Ultimately, this affected her work. Portman had to actively work to avoid being pigeonholed in certain kinds of roles.
“When I was in my teens I was like, ‘I don’t wanna have any love scenes or make-out scenes,’” the actress recalled. “I would start choosing parts that were less sexy because it made me worried about the way I was perceived and how safe I felt.”
Natalie Portman Doesn’t Look Back Fondly At The Movie That Kickstarted Her Career
Natalie Portman’s career wouldn’t be the same if she hadn’t been cast in Léon: The Professional back in 1994. Although she was only twelve at the time, critics were fairly impressed with her acting skills. It’s no wonder how this role kickstarted her career!
Although she’s openly credited The Professional for boosting her career, Portman admits that she can’t watch this movie without feeling embarrassed not only by her acting but also by the fact that her character was so overly sexualized.
“It’s a movie that’s still beloved, and people come up to me about it more than almost anything I’ve ever made, and it gave me my career, but it is definitely, when you watch it now, it definitely has some cringey, to say the least, aspects to it,” Portman told The Hollywood Reporter. “So, yes, it’s complicated for me.”
Source: NewsFinale
