Natalie Portman

Interview By: Andrea Tuccillo
AndreaTuccillo@TheCinemaSource.com

Natalie Portman isn't like every other girl in Hollywood. No excessive shopping sprees, DUIs, scandalous hookups, or late-night partying for her. She has bigger issues to think about and inspiring new projects to seek out. Unafraid to be a beauty with a brain (she graduated from Harvard in 2003), Portman prefers to play strong females. Her latest role as Anne Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl fits the bill. Though doomed for tragedy, the Anne portrayed in the film proves to be ambitious, complex, and ahead of her time.

Directed by Justin Chadwick and co-starring Scarlett Johansson and Eric Bana, the film focuses on the rivalry between Anne and her younger sister Mary (Johansson), and both of the girls' torrid affairs with King Henry VIII (Bana).

'I wasn't aware of this story before I read the script so that's exciting to be able to introduce a story from the beginning and then it's exciting to play in England where people know a lot about Anne Boleyn,' Portman says. 'I think it's sort of pop culture knowledge. It's exciting to turn it on its head because the whole story of Mary is a very untold story.'

She also jumped at the chance to work with Johansson, for whom she has great respect. 'I read the script and loved it and came on as Anne and I was really just like I will only do it if Scarlett does it because I've just watched her for so long since we were kids and she's so true always and so good,' Portman says. 'You just never get the chance to work with someone your own age who you admire. It's such great chance.'

Though Anne and Mary's relationship was often strained, Portman and Johansson got along wonderfully. 'In terms of working with each other, Scarlett was a total dream partner to work with,' she says. 'I felt like we were always on the same team and the fact that she was always so present and so focused and so real, I could just believe everything and stay in the scene and feel supported. It was really one of my best, if not my best, acting experiences opposite someone my age.'

The Boleyn family essentially offered up their daughters has mistresses for the king in order to better their social standing. While it seems like a radical thing to do, Portman believes that situations like that still exist today. 'I think it definitely exists and I think that's why it's still a story that's resonant now because you know those people, you know those people who think of marriage as empire building or whatever,' she says.

Although Anne and Mary were forced to obey their family's wishes, they also contained a strength all their own. In fact, each woman in the film'from the Boleyn girls' mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) to the scorned Queen Katherine of Aragon (Ana Torrent)'possessed an independent nature that could not be fully expressed because of the constraints of the time. 'I think it was so crucial that every woman in this movie had their own real strength and character and it was essential that everyone, even in these smaller roles, had this presence because if we're all sort of rivals,' Portman says. 'There's not rivalry there if each person isn't their own competitor, if they don't show a good fight. I think every woman is so fantastic and has such complexity and [is] vulnerable and strong. I think it's really important to make it feel real.'

She also discovered another way of bringing authenticity to her character through the way Anne dressed. Portman is used to getting the physical look of a character just right. She famously shaved her head to play Evey in V for Vendetta and donned some spacey costumes as Queen Amidala in the Star Wars prequels. If anything, she sees it as a way of getting into character, which is why when she was asked to wear Anne Boleyn's extravagant dresses and corsets she viewed it as a good thing. 'For the Anne the costumes were so bold and daring and it definitely matched who she was as a woman too so that was helpful,' she says.

As for what future jobs may bring, Portman will continue searching for meaningful roles that present realistic images of women. 'I want to do things that are like real people and I think women can be weak or vulnerable or strong, they can be not very smart or brilliant,' she explains. 'There's not one kind of woman out there and I think it's important to portray a wide variety. The number of roles for strippers and prostitutes or the opposite, like, she's the moral center of the film, she's the pure one, she's the one that makes the man realize who he should be'that sort of dichotomy exists so strongly. It's like the virgin and whore thing in evidence. That's really been bothering me so to find a character who is complicated like the women in this film is very exciting. And also, I love comedies so much and any time I read a comedy the girl's in fashion, she's really into clothes and she just wants to get married. Those are not values that I care to jump the bandwagon on.'