Natalie Portman takes a walk down memory lane as she rewatches scenes from her classic works including 'Annihilation,' 'Thor,' 'Star Wars,' and 'Black Swan.' Natalie dishes on the psychological aspects that came with getting into character for 'Black Swan,' downing protein drinks to prep for 'Thor' and so much more.MAY DECEMBER is available on Netflix now, https://www.netflix.com/maydecemberEditor: Jess LanePost Production Supervisor: Christian OlguinPost Production Coordinator: Jovan JamesSupervising Editor: Erica DeLeoAssistant Editor: Andy MorellGraphics Supervisor: Ross Rackin
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 any truth to the rumor that there was an alternate motivation that Padme was actually going to kill
00:04 Anakin? Oh that's cool. No, no. Cool but no. Hi I'm Natalie Portman and I'm going to be watching
00:15 some scenes from throughout my career.
00:17 [Music]
00:39 They had a few cameras rolling at the same time because it was obviously a one-time occurrence
00:42 when they shaved my actual hair. They had my hairdresser on the film playing the role so that
00:49 he knew what he was doing. It wasn't like thank god it wasn't just an actor they handed a
00:53 an electric razor. It was very dramatic and a lot of pressure to you know get it in one one take.
01:11 I was reading like a lot of kind of freedom fighter kind of memoirs and
01:18 biographies, autobiographies before to kind of get that mindset of people who are
01:24 imprisoned for their beliefs and the kind of injustice of it and the moral integrity that
01:31 that strengthens and fortifies someone in those spaces and I was really like in that whole world.
01:39 Look all they want is one little piece of information. Just give them something, anything.
01:44 Thank you but I'd rather die behind the chemical sheds. She has so much integrity in in the story
01:52 that's why I think it's like so you know meaningful. I feel like the the whole V for
01:58 Vendetta story and the the mask I see it at rallies now. I mean it's really just such
02:04 so so symbolic for a lot of people I think.
02:08 [Music]
02:12 Our lives can change with every breath we take.
02:15 We both know that. When you tell them to let go of what's gone.
02:23 I love Ashley Judd more than maybe anyone. Like she is so incredible as an actress to watch
02:34 but then also as a person like I filmed this the summer after I graduated high school before I went
02:40 to college and she like got me all these like sheets and pillowcases for my dorm room afterwards
02:48 and was like got me all like ready and she was just the most warm wonderful friend and now I
02:55 recently reunited with her saw her at the UN. She's become the most brilliant advocate for
03:01 women's rights and speaks so eloquently and forcefully for women's place in society and
03:11 I'm just in awe of her. I mean she's a professor at Harvard now she's like kind of can do anything
03:16 and she's just one of the most courageous brilliant awesome people I know.
03:23 And tell them to hold on like hell to what they've got each other and a mother who would
03:32 die for them and almost did. I think it might have been the first time I played a mom on screen
03:39 and so wild to do that so long before it happened in real life and I think I had a little bit of an
03:48 inkling that like when you become a mom you have that quick knowledge of you know how to take care
03:54 of other people and she has that in this moment.
03:58 Come away with me. Help me raise our child. Leave everything else behind while we still can.
04:11 It was such a big part of my life to be part of Star Wars for so many years. I made the first one
04:17 when I was 16 years old and then this one I did when I was 22. Hope your mom was right. You've
04:25 changed. It was really wild to do green screen. It felt like a very pure form of acting actually.
04:32 It's like almost like when you're a kid and you're pretending that you know your refrigerator box is
04:36 your rocket ship you know that that you have to really not just create the world inside of you
04:41 but the world around you as well. First off the name is Mighty Thor.
04:52 Secondly if you can't say Mighty Thor I'll accept Dr. Jane Foster.
05:02 It's pretty amazing you know you kind of feel like oh I guess I'll just get to play
05:10 petite women my whole life and then they're like no you're gonna play a six foot three character
05:16 then you watch yourself on screen I'm like this is what it looks like to be like a big person.
05:21 This is what it feels like. Eat my hammer. The most surprising thing was how much you have to eat.
05:28 Like it was all about like protein shakes all day which are just so gross after a while so it was a
05:34 funny world to to get an insight into. Oh it was yeah it would be so fun to do. You get a lot of
05:42 cool points with your kids when you do a superhero movie.
05:45 This is from Annihilation which I loved making. This was back of the studio we shot this and
06:00 there was an animatronic crocodile monster that we used but most of it was cg'd after.
06:06 I was early in my pregnancy here of my second child so nobody knew but I was like felt really
06:19 hardcore being like pregnant like shooting a machine gun like that. It really felt radical
06:25 to be with so many amazing women together doing this kind of story and playing these kinds of
06:33 roles. Tall grass and military fatigues with these big guns on us and packs like it certainly wasn't
06:40 like anything I'd ever done and I hadn't seen it before so it really it did feel very radical.
06:52 It just seemed to me such a shame when we came here to find hardly anything of the past in the
06:57 house hardly anything before 1902. It was so awesome working with Greta Gerwig. It was my
07:03 second time working with her after No Strings Attached and it was so fun to like have my friend
07:10 you know and get to see her be amazing and now of course she's just blown us away with her writing
07:16 and directing prowess. Well if they don't want it in the past you see they could sell it or throw
07:23 it out. It was really intense you know it was the first time and only time I've ever had to do
07:29 something that was so precise because we were replicating these exact videos with the same shots
07:35 and using the original sound so I was practicing not only the the words but also the exact rhythms
07:47 of the original interview. It was almost like learning music you know that you had to learn
07:52 the exact rhythms and where she took a breath and where she sighed and all of that. It was hard to
07:59 lose it after doing it for so long because it was really like really became part of my psyche.
08:04 [Music]
08:21 Well I think in this scene she realizes that she's hurt herself. This pursuit of perfection
08:29 is you know literally killing her. [Music]
08:39 It was amazing because actually the physical prep helped me a lot for the psychological side because
08:46 I really got a sense of the pain that you subject yourself to and regularize yourself to. The
08:54 physical pain also the pressure to be very thin which is like a whole other self-deprivation.
09:04 The pressure of the competition and the perfection and all of that I got also from a lot of the
09:10 people who were training me as we were spending the time training because it's hours and hours
09:15 and hours I would spend with these individuals and I would start feeling their personalities
09:23 and how the experience of you know trying to live up to these expectations shaped them and
09:30 that was all really helpful for the psychological aspect.
09:33 [Music]
09:45 They're sweet aren't they? Very.
09:48 [Music]
09:55 They're a very beloved part of this community. I can see that.
10:00 This couple Elizabeth watches, Grace and Joe, have invited her knowing that she's studying them and
10:08 they're kind of performing for her. They're kind of performing this like normal American you know
10:15 barbecue and of course there's this very sinister history underneath it because of the crime that
10:24 started their relationship that they're trying to kind of rewrite with this performance for her.
10:31 And I love all the like Americana with the flag this kind of idyllic sunset but one of the things
10:38 about shooting in Savannah is it is this beautiful idyllic place but with a very ugly history which
10:44 is not dissimilar to Joe and Gracie's relationship. I think it just asks so many amazing questions
10:51 about like can art be amoral? What parts of our identity do we perform? How do we really get to
10:59 truth? Is it possible to get to truth through these characters that are really like unpredictable
11:05 and wild and ferocious?
11:07 [Music]
11:12 Thanks everybody for watching. I hope you enjoyed it.