Natalie Portman’s feelings about her Oscar are super refreshing
Natalie Portman, award-winning actress, producer, scholar, model, and political activist, can officially add one more title to her résumé: director. But don’t expect any Oscar humble-brags from her. In the latest issue of the Hollywood Reporter which features an interview with Portman about the film she directed (all in Hebrew) A Tale of Love and Darkness, Portman touches on many important topics including her Oscar.
Won for her chilling role in Black Swan, Portman shrugs off mention of the coveted accolade: “I don’t know where it is. I think it’s in the safe or something. I don’t know. I haven’t seen it in a while,” she reveals to the magazine.
In fact, the actress doesn’t put too much weight in the Oscar. ” . . . I was reading the story of Abraham to my child and talking about, like, not worshipping false idols. And this [the Oscar] is literally like gold men. This is literally worshipping gold idols — if you worship it. That’s why it’s not displayed on the wall. It’s a false idol,” Portman says.
Frankly, we think it’s really cool that Portman isn’t all about winning awards — she seems to be more focused on her personal and professional hustle, which is going seriously well, might we add. Her new film (which she both wrote and directed), A Tale of Love and Darkness, is based off a memoir about an Israeli journalist. It smartly and poignantly joins the conversation about Israeli-Palestine relations, and it’s also an ambitious film that clearly comes from a deep place in Portman’s heart. Portman is very connected to Israel; she was born there, her father is Israeli, has family there, and is fluent in Hebrew.
She tells the Hollywood Reporter of the memoir, “The language was really what [drew me], his obsession with words and the way words are connected in Hebrew, which has this incredible poetry and magic. . . . There’s just incredible beauty to that. [Jews are] a people built of words, people built of books, and it’s quite beautiful to see that, which is a strange thing to start for a movie.”
A Tale of Love and Darkness is filmed in Hebrew, a language Portman thought was tremendously important to preserve in the film. Producer Ram Bergman stated, “[Portman] said, ‘It’s got to be a love letter in Hebrew.’ I said, ‘It will make things harder.’ She said, ‘I don’t care.’” Portman’s determination to create a genuine, authentic representation of a story totally reflects on her values as a filmmaker and artist — and we love that about her.
A Tale of Love and Darkness will make its debut at the Cannes Film Festival in a couple of weeks. We’re sure it’ll receive the amount of recognition it deserves, whether it ends up winning an Oscar or not.
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