‘I SPECIFICALLY LOOK FOR ROLES THAT ARE NOT LIKE MY LIFE’
It's May 2024, and Natalie Portman is speaking to Total Film having wrapped another day's shoot in London on Guy Ritchie's globe-trotting adventure, Fountain of Youth. If it feels like an unexpected choice, well, that's to be expected from Portman, whose career has defied expectations since she began working as a child. Straight out of the gate, it was early roles in adult fare like Leon and Michael Mann's Heat that marked her out as a serious talent who could hold her own against heavyweights like Gary Oldman and Al Pacino.
The Star Wars prequel trilogy would give her a platform of unprecedented scale, but even while starring as Padmé Amidala for George Lucas, she found time for the varied likes of Closer, Cold Mountain and Garden State (not to mention studying for a degree in psychology at Harvard). And that eclecticism has continued since, with a filmography littered with collaborations with directors like Wes Anderson, Wong Karwai, Pablo Larraín and Darren Aronofsky (the latter resulting in a Best Actress Oscar for Black Swan), nestled alongside broader comedies and Marvel movies.
Next up, she's making her first major foray into television, with Apple TV+ miniseries Lady in the Lake, which she stars in and produces with the production company she co-founded, MountainA. ‘It was really tricky,’ she says of juggling the acting and producing responsibilities, ‘because it was a really complicated production. We had many challenges along the way, and so it was very much like “put on one hat, put on another hat”.’
The show - adapted from the acclaimed novel by Laura Lippman – is largely set in 1960s Baltimore and follows the story of two women. Maddie (Portman) is a stifled Jewish housewife craving to return to work in investigative journalism, who finds herself following the story of two murders. One of those killed was Cleo Johnson (Moses Ingram, The Queen’s Gambit, Obi-Wan Kenobi), a Black woman with political connections. Through the unfolding mystery (and Cleo's narration), these two women become inextricably entangled. Like much of Portman's work, it's intelligent, rich, and deals with numerous potent themes, including power dynamics through the prism of race, religion and gender.
Alma Har'el () serves as the showrunner and director and leads the writing, too. ‘[Har'el] was just extraordinary in weathering all of the challenges, and just facing them, and making the best of everything, and just staying creative, and staying true to her
