Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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Natalie fucking Portman, welcome to I Weigh. How are you? I'm good, thank you. Thanks for having me on. I'm so happy to have you here. The last time I saw you was maybe two weeks ago in Paris. Yes. First thing in the morning. At the Stella show. And I had no idea that I was just sitting in Anna Wintour's chair while she was standing politely waiting for me to move and I hadn't seen her. I was just
Gabbing away with you. Talking about you coming on this podcast and just, and I couldn't see why my agent was going, get off, get the fuck off.
up behind me. I was like, why is she being so intense? I'm talking to my good friend Natalie. And turn around and saw Anna Wintour there and almost shit my pants and then got up and ran away. But it was lovely to see you then. I'm so sorry to have to do this, but I'm going to gush at you just for a brief moment. But I have loved you for the longest time. Thank you. I'm only a few years behind you in life, which makes your
Crazy success, even more despicable to me. How dare you? But it means that you're one of the few people I've been able to kind of grow up alongside and
and so you have been such a huge role model to me not just because you are such a remarkable actor and I've loved your work long before I ever even thought about becoming an actor but also because of the poise and the dignity and the intellect with which you have handled your public presence and the way that you have bucked the trend of being what
People try. Well, I don't know if people tried to force you into this, but you bucked the trend of what was expected of you in such a misogynist time, an openly, rampantly misogynist time in our industry. And you always really stood out to me because of that and showed me that there was another way to do this.
And so I really appreciate you for that. Thank you. Well, I appreciate you and everything you've done in advocacy alongside all of your incredible acting work. So that means so much to me. Thank you. Thank you. I know that it's been a...
concerted effort like you've been very thoughtful from a very young age about the way that you project yourself publicly from as young as basically when Leon came out where you were what 13 when that you 11 when you started filming right and 13 when it came out yeah totally and I
I know that you've been asked this so many times, but I do think the question is more pertinent now that we have had so many documentaries come out and so much information come out now about exactly how predatory the industry has been for children. And I think we always had a sense that it was inappropriate for young people to work within the industry and that it's crazy to grow up as a child in such formative years surrounded by adults who have no...
who you can't relate to in any way regarding your experience. And I think that, you know, there have been rumblings of how dangerous this industry was, but now we've really had it so explicitly confirmed to us. And so more than ever, I wonder how you were able to navigate this industry as a child. Yeah, it's a lot different.
I think I was very lucky and also had great parents, very protective parents. So they really watched over me carefully. And then I think also some of it is like,
dumb luck of, you know, not having those really horrible experiences. Like I've had like, you know, the usual misogyny, like you're discussing, but not, you know, I wasn't assaulted, which I think is unfortunately a matter of luck, you know, who, who you end up around, um, when you're there. Um, but, um,
Yeah, so it was very lucky to have that level of protection from my parents and that luck. And then I loved what I was doing, which was always helpful too, because it was fun for me, even though it was work. But it is a strange thing.
It is a very strange thing to work as a child. I now understand as an adult with children, you know, to think about a child working is very, yeah, problematic. Yeah, of course. And I don't think...
our parents or anyone's parents back then really understood. I don't think anyone understood. I, you know, I remember back, you know, in those years, no one was talking about any of these things. And so I don't even know how your parents knew to be so protective. Were they in the industry? No, no, my parents. I think that's probably why they were so protective. Right. They really thought of it.
You know, my dad's a doctor, my mom's an artist, and they, I think, were so freaked out by the whole film world. And maybe they didn't know about the kind of predatory nature of the business then, but they did know about drugs. And, you know, like, they were very scared that I would end up in rehab. You know, that was kind of the big thing.
thing of like what what happens to a child actor that was kind of the the shorthand in those days so yeah it was it was I think probably more concerned about that one of the reasons I also asked this aside from the fact that we've now we now look back in hindsight and have learned so much is because
Ten years ago, this would have been quite an unrelatable question because so few people will ever have been on screen as a child. And yet now, because of social media,
either parents are putting their kids on camera or kids have access to their own sort of quote unquote child friendly apps like Snapchat, et cetera, which are almost designed for that very preteen or teenage age. And kids are on screen now from such a young age. And that's such a difficult thing to confront because you are, it's very navel gazing. It's very hard with
Just even the concept of the selfie as you become fixated on yourself, on your own image, all the insecurity that we know that that's bringing statistically, all these different problems. And then also, again, the access issue.
of predatory people who want to, who treat you like an adult, even though you're a child online. And so I guess I wonder if your experience as a child, how protective your parents were over you, what we have now learned about the impact of these things, how that has impacted the way that you raise your children and what you expose them to. Yeah, I think it's really...
Actually, exactly what you put your finger on of like my experience as a child actor is unusual, like not many children work at that age. But you're right that now with social media, you get certain aspects of it like.
I think there's a real fracturing of self, of like the person, like you know how people see you. You know how you want other people to see you. You know who you really are in private. And all of these things are like different identities, right?
and different sides of yourself. And it's, it's very, I mean, it's the challenge to like, be in your body, I guess, you know, when you're performative, when you're showing yourself as, as, you know, a character and in a public way. And yeah, I'm, I'm very careful with
I obviously don't really want my children online. I have a teenager now. So my son is, of course, on apps and, you know, it's part of the social life that you need when you're a teenager. And so I'm accepting it. But, you know, we talk a lot about
what you put out there, how everything can follow you forever, you know, like be anything you put there. Imagine that all of your friends, parents and all of your teachers and me and your future employers and, you know, the entire school will see anything that you put up, you know, that if it passes that
then be okay putting it, you know, on there. God, I wish you'd been my mum when I joined Twitter. I wish someone had told me that shit. I think it's great that you are able to give him that advice.
Your ability to have navigated almost coming up to 25 years as an unproblematic fave on the internet is honestly, it's Olympic gold worthy. Well done. Thank you. I don't know. And you haven't done it without being outspoken, but you just have a certain measured approach, I think, that my unhinged arse will only ever be able to aspire to. But I'm glad that you exist.
And so do you have any opinions on whether your children will follow in your footsteps or is that sort of something that you are allowing them to find on their own? They'll do what they want to do. Okay.
And I'm very excited to see, yeah, what they choose. Is living outside of America helpful to you in the current climate of how things are? Yes. Is that an easier way to raise children and also to exist as a woman who feels a bit safer? Yes. I mean, to live in a country where...
women have you know full choice for their bodies is is wonderful to raise a girl in and also to not have to worry about guns in schools is a really much better way to send children off every day and then of course just in general the political discourse has become so
extreme in the US that it is helpful to have a little bit of distance from it. What about for you? Is London... Yeah, so I just left America and I'm sure I'll go back and forth for work as you do, but I definitely feel more at peace here. We still have a shitty government, as does almost everyone now in the world, but I definitely feel...
Right now, it feels so fractured. And also on both sides, the discourse is so fractured. It's not something that I would just label Republicans with. The online discourse in particular feels quite feral and violent, emotionally very violent. And
the speed at which we ostracize and otherize each other is petrifying to me. And that just seems to have escalated and escalated and escalated over the last four years. And so I think I just had to get away for a minute and, and,
remind myself of the sort of humanity of everything. And I think especially somewhere like Los Angeles, where you're not taking public transport, you're not walking around in the street, you're not really engaging in everyday life, you can somewhat lose a bit of your humanity because you're looking at the world through a screen from your house that you never leave. And here I'm outside, I'm on the street, I'm eavesdropping on people's phone calls. LAUGHTER
I found myself, one man was having such an interesting phone call the other day and I'm so despicable for this, but I found myself speeding up so I could hear how it ended. I'm just kidding.
But also just watching a teenage girl have like a grump with her father, like all the different tiny moments of life that just remind you of everyone's intricacies and vulnerabilities, etc. I think has brought me back to my humanity and made me feel closer to the world than I've ever found, than I have found in the last 10 years. So that's been good for me. And it feels as though there's a world outside of American news discourse now.
Because it's just taken over everything. Getting back just partially to your career and talking about the way that you've presented yourself. I remember reading about the fact that after Leon came out, this was when you were 13, it was the first time you'd received very hyper-sexualized messages.
messages and letters and fan mail from men and it's physical fan mail back then, right? Yes. And so that had a massive impact on how you chose to present yourself physically and kind of emotionally to the world. Can you talk to me a little bit about that? Because again,
That's something that is happening to so many women and so many teenagers, given the way that social media encourages us to perform to the male gaze. Yeah, well, I think the really complicated thing about it is that we are sexual.
We do have our sexuality. And at that age, it's really just starting and developing. And at every age, we have a sexuality. But then when you get this, I guess, threatening kind of feeling from the external world of like, oh, we want to do things to you. You want to shut it off.
And you want to be like, no, you, you know, build walls. Like, how do I build walls that say like, this is not okay. And so as a kid, I quickly was like, okay, I have to be like the smart one, the serious one, the one that you respect, like, you know, and like create this real persona of that is like a wall that makes me safe.
But it's hard because it's like part of your part of creative expression is like the expression of sexuality, you know? And so it's been kind of liberating now to be in my 40s. And like, I don't feel that threat anymore. Like I feel I don't feel like I'm particularly sexualized by other people. And I also feel like safe at my own level.
adulthood and ability to manage situations and stuff. And so it becomes a very interesting part of my creativity and my expression now, which I feel like I wasn't able to
really tap into earlier on because it was a part of myself. I felt like I needed to cut off from the world because I didn't want to feel unsafe. Yeah. It's also, given especially how young you looked and you are a petite person,
human being anyway. I am. How little you looked at that age. I cannot imagine a 13-year-old you opening up that male. Like, you really looked like a child. I had a full beard and full tits by the time I was 10. Like, I was...
It was insane, you know, but you really looked like a kid and I cannot imagine that visual of you opening that, like excited to open fan mail for your first big movie and receiving that. And I'm so sad to see how little that has moved on in the world, given that now it's, you know, your fan mail is our DMs. It's just unsolicited, insane photographs and photos.
fantasies of sexual assault and all these different things that some men feel very emboldened to send to us purely because we have agreed to be seen on camera. And that extends to people who aren't on camera and who are just at school minding their own fucking business. But it is really, really terrifying to me. And I always wondered what the experience of Closer was like, which is a phenomenal film, phenomenal performance, but also...
quite a sexually bold film where you're playing a stripper. Was that a huge decision at the time, given how you had chosen to protect yourself until then? It was. I mean, I think the writing was so extraordinary by Patrick Marber. And then we were in such good hands with Mike Nichols as a director. And he, Mike was someone I was very close to and was very much like,
probably the most important mentor of my life. It felt safe. Like I wasn't scared about it. And, and Mike was amazing. Like we shot stuff that later I didn't feel comfortable with him using and he just took it out, you know, like no questions asked. So that's the kind of relationship that, um, you know, you need, I think, to feel completely free to do everything. And then, um,
you know, have someone you trust to keep you, keep you comfortable at every stage. 100%. I, because of the way that you had portrayed yourself publicly, and I'd only ever met you previously as a journalist interviewing you, this is very natural now as to my dynamic with you, because I used to interview you for movie junkets all those years ago, and you were always so kind and so warm. But, but, but I would say appropriately guarded. And so I had no sense of
of who you were until I really got to sit down with you when you kindly agreed to do my boyfriend James's music video. Yes. Nine months pregnant. I love so much. You know, I like his music is just such an important part of my life. Like really when I feel like
I mean, I go to it all the time. It's very, I love your relationship and your, I don't know, it's very beautiful. And yes, it was an honor to get to make
The music video when I was very, very pregnant. I think you were like eight or nine months. Oh, I gave birth like a week later. That is so terrifying. I remember everyone because we had you in a swimming pool at night and you were such a legend. And given how much people need to pee at that point in pregnancy and you're surrounded by water for hours, I was like, this woman is a fucking legend. You didn't complain once. It was so late. It was so dark. The pool was like the only place I wanted to be when I was nine months.
Okay, great. You don't have to be on your feet. But still, there were camera people everywhere. It's such an agitating time and you were so cool and chill and lovely and such a good sport. And I remember just the whole time we were watching these extraordinary shots of you from underneath the pool, just swimming around. And I was like...
I'm so scared she's going to give birth. It's like it's a totally different video at that point. Yeah, it's a very different video. But it's really, I show it to my daughter all the time now because she's,
She's like, there's one shot where she's like moving in my stomach and you see the stomach go like, boom. And so I always, she always wants to watch it. She's seven now. And she's like, oh yeah, I was like always dancing, you know? Oh, that's very nice to have that as like a,
A memory. Perfect. I'm really glad that that's how you feel because that was a hell of a fucking shoot. But I got a sense of you and I was like, oh, this woman has a... I just got to see so much more of your actual personality. And while I imagine it's sometimes frustrating to have to close those parts of yourself off for people to not realize how funny we now know you are from your film portrayals and the goofiness and all the multifaceted parts of you. Do you also feel now looking back...
seeing how far the parasocial mania of the way that we, like the intense way that we feel that we know celebrities, do you feel like it's sort of protected you? Yeah. I think ultimately it's not that important for strangers to know the real you, you know, like it's important for my loved ones to know the real me and everyone else can get like,
an idea of me, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Audrey Hepburn filter of you. Yeah, it's okay. Like, I think, you know, I obviously want to be honest and open in a way that's helpful to people. But like, you know, I don't obsess over what people have
who I don't know, think of me. And I don't, it doesn't matter. Like, I don't think like they need to have that. Like, I, I, I love sharing my work. I love experiencing other people's work. And yeah, I think saving that like raw depth for it.
loved ones. You're also a proper character actor. I remember interviewing Robert De Niro and he was so monosyllabic during our interview and so just kind of cut off and disassociated. And then as soon as the interview wrapped...
He was so full of beans and funny and nice and cool. And I was like, hey, man, where the fuck was this guy during that interview? And he was like, no, I'm a serious actor. He was like, I don't want anyone to know who I am. He was like, my career is better for people not knowing the real me so that they have no idea who I am. And then they can immediately absorb me because there are some actors who shot...
so far in superstardom at the kind of height of viral fame that we had such a strong sense of everything about them, every opinion they have, what they like to do. And I think it kind of harmed the way that we were able to then embrace them.
Absolutely.
That means that people hold you forever to who you were in that moment that's documented online. And your growth is so constant. I remember thinking I'd know who I was by the time I was 30. And then I thought, I'll know who I am by the time I'm 40. And I'm recognizing now that every single year I'm transforming completely. Do you feel that way? Oh, absolutely. And it's really...
upsetting to be confronted with like, uh, like some stupid thing I said when I was 12, 13 in an interview that they're like, Oh, you said this, can you talk more about that? Or can you explain what you meant? And I'm like, I don't even remember saying that. I don't remember why I said it. Um, and so yeah, stuff follows you. I mean, luckily I've
Mine were just, like, dorky, not, like, offensive. But, like, it's... Well, it's lucky for some, Natalie. Yeah. But, yeah, I think it's really a shame. And I envy the people who...
you know, don't have a trail that they've left behind. I mean, this is a mental health based podcast. I obviously don't want to delve all the way deep into your brain because it's not fair and you are a private person. But within whatever you feel comfortable sharing, what has your experience been with your mental health in your entire life in one sentence? I've had
periods of depression. And, you know, I feel like I've just been in like a constant learning phase of how to take, you know, care of myself, how to best be good to myself and give my body and my soul and my mind, like the input it needs to stay healthy. So
Yeah, I mean, everything from, you know, making sure I'm exercising, which is such a big part of mental health, to eating right, which is such a big part of mental health, to, you know, spending time with friends, spending time on my own, spending time, enough time sleeping, like all of those things. I think, you know, I've had to be very conscious of because it's an important balance, you know.
And motherhood, I think, tests the boundaries of that because you don't have that same space to always prioritize yourself. And I imagine that's never an easy... I'm not a parent. I don't think I'll be a parent. Having two dogs has already proven challenge enough for my tiny brain. But it
It's something that I'm now understanding more as my friends are starting to have children is like, you just don't have a fucking second, especially when they're really young. Your kids are now 14 and seven. And so you have that space now. But I do think that you and I are both from the generation of that sort of banner of women can have it all.
And career women can have it all. And I think that a lot of us felt that responsibility to live up to that slogan and to project that slogan to other women. And I now look back and I'm incredibly cognizant of the fact that I have a responsibility to make sure that people know that actually I'm really struggling sometimes and I can't have it all. And I've actually taken a massive step back in my career because it was too much.
And in the sacrifice between spending time with my friends, being there for the people I love, spending time with my dogs that I'm obsessed with, spending time with my boyfriend that I've built this 10-year love with, that I was away from all of that. And I think it took also the death of a close friend this year who was very young for me to just go, okay, I have to stop. And I feel as though I now...
really need to make up for my sort of footprint here in presenting like I'm doing this and I'm doing that and my hair is always you know like perfectly brushed and this that and the other I think it's a I now find it to be very toxic and I wonder if that's what has made you much more open about the struggles of being a woman about the difficulty of motherhood do you feel like you've had a rude awakening in the having it all it's a lot it's a lot
I don't know. I mean, I think it's definitely a shock when you start having kids and working at the same time. It's a shock because it is it's it's so much more responsibility, love, time, effort, anxiety.
than you've ever felt before. And confronting all the parts of yourself that they're just absorbing like tiny little invasive sponges. Yes. Yes. And also like, yeah, everyone you live with is like a mirror to yourself as well. And you're a mirror to them as well. So it's really an interesting process.
And obviously like extraordinary. I think I've realized how much other women are important to being able to do. I mean, you can't do it all at all. That's not the message. But if you want to do
have both family and career and be, you know, good friends. And like you were saying, spend time with your dogs. There's, I find the women in my life that first that I work with, like, you know, our nanny, my assistant, like, these are people that
make, make it possible for me to work and have a life, uh, a real life. And, um, and then also, of course, friends and mothers of my kids, friends, you know, I mean, those are people that, um, where you have a support system, you have a network, you, you, you,
you really feel like, oh, yes, it was meant to be a village, you know? Exactly. A hundred percent. Trevor Noah once said to me that, you know, he grew up in South Africa where it's very normal to live about five minutes away from everyone that you love. And you just dump the kids with your parents and then you and your partner bugger off and they
They basically raise the children and then so and so forth with every generation. And there's just everyone's in each other's business. And he said that he feels like in America specifically and the United Kingdom, I guess, they encourage you to move away from your village and then they sell it back to you.
And I think that that was very illuminating for me as to how much of an effort we need to kind of build with one another. I've decided to build a commune of all of my friends later down the line that I'm starting to prepare now. Current working name is Jamilville, which James is...
Very perturbed by, obviously. Nice. But I am working towards the village. And I think the expression is really, we can do it all, right? Rather than you can do it all. Yes. Is pushing for women, especially, to be able to come together because we collaborate.
unlike anything you've ever seen. And for so long, we have been pushed away from one another and divided in order to not only be conquered, but also divided so that we wouldn't tell each other what a hard time we were having in case that we started to work out that there was a pattern emerging. And I think that that posts the Me Too movement, which I know you were hugely involved in. And I hate using it as a past tense, but there's a part of it that feels like that conversation has gone away a little bit, even though I do think tremendous progress was made.
But I do feel as though there has been a shift. Having experienced Hollywood in the 90s where women were not encouraged to befriend one another and we were taught to be threatened by one another. Yes. And you were a very, very, you are very, very beautiful. But like being back then, being a beautiful young woman who's having tremendous success. Yes.
I wonder what that experience was like for you within the industry. Was it more isolating than it is now? Have you found more community post Me Too? Oh, absolutely. It's been really amazing. I don't know if you found this, but like it used to be that I would go on set and be the only woman or girl when I was a kid.
they'd be like, oh, it's a bunch of guys and there's the girl, you know, like, or rarely. And when I did have the rare opportunity to work with other women, it was like heaven, you know, I remember I'm no strings attached and there was like Mindy Kaling and Greta Gerwig and Olivia Thirlby. And like, it was, and Liz Merriweather wrote it. And it was just like, we were just so,
having so much fun together because it was rare was for me, it was rare. And so when I'd walk into a room at one of these like events, parties, whatever, I wouldn't like have friends there. And now when I like, because of times up and meeting all of these women, I walk into one of those events and I'm like, this is like,
I feel comfortable. This is my environment. So I have friends in our industry and now we can also like create things where we work together and it's just much more friendly, I find.
We were also just so congratulated in the noughties for being the girl that hangs out with loads of guys. Do you know what I mean? And learning how to code yourself towards men, not in a way where you're seeking their gaze, but you're seeking their approval. So just sort of learning how to be one of the guys, hang with the guys. And that was something that was so celebrated by men. And I think that now we look upon that with a very different lens and actually...
where that came from and that actually that was another way to kind of separate women, pit them against each other and have women demean other women for the choices they made. And I think that that's been huge. ♪
You just mentioned Time's Up. Obviously, Time's Up went through huge controversy. You and I were both heavily involved in the Me Too movement. But some of your comments after the kind of demise of Time's Up really resonated with what I feel, a lot of what I talk about on this podcast. And I wanted to get into that with you about the fact that
You talk about part of the problem with Time's Up being that when you're an activist, you are supposed to be completely perfect yourself because you're supposed to mirror what it is that you're trying to see in the world and that that's actually quite dangerous. Can you expand upon that for me? Yeah, I think, I mean, I understand and I agree with the ideal of being, you have to live up to the ideals you espouse. And
But it's also hard because, you know, we're all humans in networks of other humans. And so, you know, it's likely that all of us have done something wrong or someone close to us has done something wrong. So there's, you know, there feels like there needs to be more grace for humans, for humans behaving like humans.
humans. You know, I'm not talking about crimes, but I'm talking about, you know, like making questionable decisions, you know, whatever that, especially when it's in the name of larger, larger changes possible. I agree. I think that there has to be a kind of, I think there has to be a re-approach in the world of social justice as to the kind of
in that there is this, we are high on moral superiority, regardless, again, of your political affiliation, like everyone has to be. We seek perfection in each other. And I think most dangerously, we seek it in ourselves in a way that then means that if we hold ourselves up to those standards, the ones that you're talking about, we
We might feel if we have made a mistake in the past or we have had a problematic thought or we were ignorant in a certain area that we don't have the right to show up in case that ever gets exposed and then people don't show up. And I wonder how you encourage people away from that feeling because there is so much perfectionism. Yeah, I mean, yeah, the perfectionism is, you know, a lot of people...
think I'm a perfectionist because I've played a perfectionist and I really am not. And I think it's actually one of the luckiest attributes I have is that I like, I'm really like
I really am not like, I'm super comfortable with things not being perfect. And I think it really helps you like move forward. Like I see perfectionism as something that gets you stuck that I've seen people get stuck in. Like they can't like they, like they won't finish something because it's not, they're not getting it right. You know, they'll like keep obsessing over something, um,
Because it's not perfect. And I feel like it's a real, it can be such a... Debilitating. Yeah, it can be debilitating. And then for organizations, it can be to demand perfection from a group of humans is like, you're only going to lose, you know, like that's never going to happen. So I don't know if it's like,
a choice so much as just a way that I am is that I'm just really not perfectionist. I wish I had it in some ways. Like I wish I was perfect.
more organized and, you know, perfectionist and in that way. Um, but I do feel like it's helped me a lot in that I, I've seen perfectionism be a real kind of, um, block to people moving forward. Like they need to get it right before they can, you know, hand in their, um,
drawing or hand in their book and i'm just like oh this is good enough you know like i i i feel like it's helped me do things because i'm not obsessing over over those details but for organizations like with times up i think to expect an organization of humans to be perfect you're just always going to you're always going to be disappointed like you're always gonna yeah
You know, you can't ask a group of humans to be perfect. But I also think it's a sort of scam. It's a load of horseshit to also say to someone, we will not accept accusation and we will not accept a call to arms to change unless you are absolutely perfect in every single way. And you see that. I face it all the time where I'm fighting for like giant structural change.
to change and people are like, oh, but you're not perfect in every single way that has nothing to do with this subject. Right. You know, you said this 11 years ago that you have since gone on to completely change your opinion on. So because you haven't lived a perfect life from birth, we will not take
seriously what you're saying, even though it doesn't matter who's saying it. It's about the message. And the message of Me Too was unarguable. We were just asking to not be harassed and assaulted in our workplace or in our everyday environment. And yet somehow anyone who spoke up for it was criticized for some sort of hypocrisy in an unrelated way.
Yes. And so it is also a weapon that I think we have to be very careful not to give into because I think we know the weapons there. We know that we're going to have lasers pointed at us. So then we try to project an often false sense of perfection and moral superiority, and then everything crumbles. I think...
That's why I come in so flawed, so raw, and so sometimes sloppy, sometimes organized, because I refute the pressure to project perfection when I'm simply asking for basic justice. Yeah.
That's beautifully said. Thank you. But you talk about the fact that you are like a messy person or you aren't perfect, etc. And I guess because your persona, as in like not your persona, but what we have had access to of the world is someone who is so perfectly polished in every way in such an elegant, lovely way. And I see that the choices that you make of every film role you have are incredibly complex or hypocritical or...
slightly problematic but also deeply impressive in human people is that where you channel that imperfection because you are choosing to of course protect your own journey I think I definitely like to explore
those dark and strange and, and, and, and yes, imperfect characters as yes, a way to, I don't know, I guess that's like the lucky thing of being an actor is you get to kind of live,
100 lives, you know. But I'm also, I also channel imperfection in my personal life. I guess in my like public life, I just, I mainly just try and be boring, you know, because I'm not, not like, like what I want people to see is I just want them to like not make narrative. Yeah. Like I don't want drama. I don't want drama. I just want like
This is who I am. And then I get to live my life and I get to have my drama in my work when I act. And so I feel like publicly,
Public wise, that's more what I aim for. Yeah, and I don't think you owe anyone showing us the cracks. I think that I was more wondering if you choose these roles specifically to highlight the stories of contradictory and complex women.
of, you know, these like intelligent human women that for so long we didn't grow up seeing because everything was written through a male lens. So the only, the only projection in, you know, when I was growing up of a, of a woman who was complex with someone who drank a lot and had a lot of sex as if that's so inherently dysfunctional. Um, and that was it. That was always the complexity that we were afforded and women are just
just human beings and we have all the same complexities as anyone else. And so I wondered if sometimes, you know, you choose such...
complex characters and I made December also just like that entire story that your production company was responsible for putting out there in the world and it's such a wonderful film and it's such a it's an intriguing but it's a difficult watch and a difficult way to like find a resolve in how you feel at the end of that and I think that it feels purposeful your storytelling always being centered around the fact that women aren't this
singular thing well i do think that um i just feel like the more different kinds of women we get to see the more possibility we we have to have our full expression i mean it drives me crazy when people say things like if women ran the world it would be a better place or whatever i'm like no because women are humans and there can be bad women leaders too it's just we need to have
You know, we need to like be able to experience the full range of human possibility. Yeah, I like to...
I want to show as many different kinds of women as possible. And the most fun ones to play are the most fucked up ones, obviously. Yeah, of course. 100%. Yeah, 100%. I only choose the role of villains. I exclude any role of anyone noble. I want to only, I categorically refuse. I turn down anything. It's very hard. It's very hard to play a very good person.
It's like very hard. I agree. I agree. And I am so inherently just problematic and complex and chaotic that I feel much more comfortable. And I also, I enjoy performing disobedience because I feel like obedience has been something that I've been fighting my entire life. And obedience comes out in every single way for women, whether it's the way that we control our weight or
or our fear of aging or our fear of graying or our fear of speaking up or our fear of clapping back and pushing forward. So much of everything that's ingrained in us is just to really just be a good little girl, ultimately. And that carries through sometimes into your 80s and 90s, I have seen with people. And I think that I'm in a constant war with myself to fight that tendency towards obedience and find different ways of
And it's an ongoing struggle. I love that. That's my form of disobedience. And so with raising a son, and again, not personally about your son, I imagine given especially how much you have leaned into public feminist discourse, and you have an all-women's football team, and you are so invested in equity across the board, not just in Hollywood. Is there a particular way that you are...
trying to raise your son to make sure that he isn't... Because this is such a fucking complicated time to raise a boy. It's always been a complicated time to be a boy and our society brutalizes boys and exposes them to so much misinformation and stops them from expressing themselves. And now we have the rise of this kind of Andrew Tate culture, which I'm not asking you to speak on. But, you know, the
The internet in particular is kind of seeking out and indoctrinating boys who feel disenfranchised. And so as a mother who's got a son, who is a teenage boy, who is online, is there anything you have kind of taken from all of this to try and specifically expose him to? Well, he's inspired me so much. I mean, he's the one who inspired me to start the football team because he was so into...
football. And then he was as excited about the women's world cup as he was about the men's world cup. And I was like, Oh wait, this is culture changing. Like if little boys grow up looking up to female athletes that that changes culture. And then why aren't these women like
when they're playing on their home teams, why don't we know about that? Like the world cup is always huge. And then they go play for their club team and people aren't paying attention. So we were like, that was the whole impetus for angel city, um, really came from, from my son. So I think he shows me and, and I feel like, um, if anything, I've been inspired and impressed by, um,
his young generation and, you know, him and his friends about the way they are about girls to girls, the way they think about women and that it's it feels very different than the way I grew up. Like and I think hopefully it's yeah, it's a different environment for them. The one thing I think I've noticed, not with him, but with more like
older teenagers and young 20s males is I always assumed that it was going to become more for women like it is for men. Like maybe we wouldn't have to wear makeup or like wouldn't have to worry about our body, but instead it feels like it's going to
the other way where like men are wearing makeup and men are like, you know, worrying about their body and their weight and manner. And I'm like, whoa, like how did that happen? I didn't that I did not expect. Like I thought that the, the, the change, the evolution was going to go towards like
being more like men. 100%. And I think it's just because they ran out of real estate on a woman's body to monetize. You know, there was, you know, a point where I think, I think I remember the day where the beauty industry started to focus onto men. And that was when the term armpit vagina went viral. And as a new thing for women to worry about when we wear a strapless dress, which is just the tiny fold of very normal skin. Oh my God.
Where your shoulder meets your tits. And armpit vagina went completely viral. This was maybe eight years ago. And people started getting armpit lifts and knee lifts. And I think Kim Kardashian had been on the cover of a magazine while pregnant. And they'd circled her arm and written elbow fat in bold. And it was all in the same week.
And also, I think maybe someone like Christiana, someone had had like earlobeplasty. And it was this compounding moment of just the absolute minutiae of a woman's form that we could edit and make her feel worried and insecure about. And I remember thinking to myself, I think I even said something at the time, because I was like, where are they going? What's left? Yeah.
Right. What's literally what's left? We're bleaching the arseholes. I didn't think I'd say this to Natalie Portman. Sorry. But we're the vaginoplasty that all of it like there's not an inch left. And I thought that that would maybe similarly to you be like, great, we've run out of space. Let's stop now.
Like, enough. But instead they were like, well, men. And I think they kind of started with gay men. And I think that then the Marvel explosion also contributed to like us seeing He-Man bodies again, which we hadn't seen in such a long time. It was like the kind of death of the dad bod and metrosexual form that men were allowed to have. Yeah.
And it's been really worrying. And, you know, boys are really struggling with eating disorders in ways that we never speak about. And, you know, I was with my company, Ai Wei, we were talking with members of the government about the fact that there's like heavy metals and Viagra in boys, in muscle gain products that are largely targeting young boys and young men. And laxatives and speed in women's kind of weight loss products.
And so we're just poisoning the kids. But I do know what you mean. And I do worry. And I'm surprised to hear that... I'm happily surprised to hear that you experience more consciousness from teenage boys and teenagers now because...
maybe it's partially also because you're in Paris, but I, in America and England, like we are having a, an emerging crisis of boys thinking girls who have sex before marriage are low value. And, you know, the explosion of the trad wife, the hyper, I think it's called, it's officially called like the rise of bimbo feminism, which is kind of rejecting a lot of the things that feminists have fought for. Um,
And so we are in a kind of tricky time and I'm really happy to hear that you are not witnessing that. And...
And I imagine part of that is what you're trying to role model and also the way that you're protecting your kids. So as we wrap up, I just wanted to ask you that with all of the advocacy, all of the things that you are fighting for and kind of seeking for in women, what is your hope for the way that we move forward? If there was one thing you could hope for in the way that we move forward, what would it be?
oh i know it's a huge question to end up you could all you could you could name 10 but you're very busy because you're a movie star yeah um i don't know about one i mean i guess the most important is um that we're more thoughtful about our planet obviously because i think without that we can't do anything else so it seems like we need to attend to the uh
health of our planet before we can figure anything else out. Well, you've heard the theory perhaps that they think that we treat the planet so badly because we refer to it as Mother Earth, Mother Nature. And actually, had it been Father Earth and Father Nature, we might have treated this planet with more reverence and looked at the hurricanes not as PMS, but more as like a giant rage that is going to finish us all off. Yes.
And so perhaps the work that all of us are trying to do within feminism will hopefully shift the way that we look at the term mother and look at the concept of the female and help us protect the earth. Natalie Portman, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Thank you so much. It was so lovely to talk and thank you for asking me on. Lots of love. You too. Bye. Bye.
Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode. I Weigh With Jameela Jamil is produced and researched by myself, Jameela Jamil, Erin Finnegan, Kimmy Gregory, and Amelia Chapelot. And the beautiful music that you are hearing now is made by my boyfriend, James Blake. And if you haven't already, please rate, review, and subscribe to the show. It's such a great way to show your support and helps me out massively. And lastly, at I Weigh, we would love to hear from you and share what you weigh at the end of this podcast. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask us in the comments section below.
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