(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Sat 14 June 2025 18:15, UK
You should never take for granted the people who make you realise you’re worth something, those who encourage you not to get caught up in the sea of noise that can make it hard to persevere at times of difficulty. Natalie Portman is endlessly grateful to a filmmaker she came to work with several times during the early years of her career, who reassured her that she was a true talent.
The actor entered the industry at a young age, getting her big break with her debut role in Leon the Professional by Luc Besson. It was a highly celebrated film, one that demonstrated Portman’s ability to play a complex character – in this case a young girl who seeks revenge on the men who murdered her whole family – although it’s a movie complicated by several factors, like Besson taking inspiration from his relationship with an underage girl while writing the script. Portman found herself sexualised by many male ‘fans’ during this time, despite the fact that she wasn’t even an adult, and at times she felt deeply uncomfortable with existing under the spotlight.
Portman continued acting, however, finding further recognition for her portrayal of Padmé in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, released in 1999. Still not yet an adult, Portman’s career was moving fast, and she even found time to study at Harvard University between roles on stage and screen.
One of these parts was in the theatre production of The Seagull, which she performed at Delacorte Theater in 2001, introducing her to the legendary director Mike Nichols. Known for directing movies like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate, the filmmaker was also prolific in the theatre, and he soon came to help Portman find her feet during this rocky period in which she lost all faith in herself.
“Star Wars had come out around the time of Seagull, and everyone thought I was a horrible actress,” Portman explained (via New York Magazine). “I was in the biggest-grossing movie of the decade, and no director wanted to work with me. Mike wrote a letter to Anthony Minghella and said, ‘Put her in Cold Mountain, I vouch for her.’ And then Anthony passed me on to Tom Tykwer, who passed me on to the Wachowskis. I worked with Milos Forman a few years later. He said, ‘Mike saved me. He wrote a letter so that I could get asylum in the U.S.’ He did that for 50 people, and it doesn’t make any one of us feel less special”.
Nichols didn’t just help Portman professionally, it seemed as though he was there for the actor as a friend, too. “When I was 25, I had my heart broken—the rupture of my adolescence, the big heartbreak. I was at his apartment on the floor, and he picked me up and gave me a pep talk and sent me to a doctor and straightened me out—literally peeled me off the floor.”
A few years after The Seagull, Nichols cast Portman in his film version of the play Closer by Patrick Marber, with the actor appearing opposite Jude Law, Clive Owen, and Julia Roberts. The intense tale of infidelity saw Portman deliver a staggering performance as Alice, and she even landed an Academy Award nomination as a result.
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