{"id":184613,"date":"2025-06-14T20:24:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-14T20:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/184613\/"},"modified":"2025-06-14T20:24:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T20:24:10","slug":"the-director-who-saved-natalie-portmans-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/184613\/","title":{"rendered":"The director who saved Natalie Portman’s career"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Natalie<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Sat 14 June 2025 18:15, UK <\/p>\n

You should never take for granted the people who make you realise you\u2019re worth something, those\u00a0who 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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

The actor entered the industry at a young age<\/a>, 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\u2019s ability to play a complex character \u2013\u00a0in this case a young girl who seeks revenge on the men who murdered her whole family \u2013 although it\u2019s 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 \u2018fans\u2019 during this time, despite the fact that she wasn\u2019t even an adult, and at times she felt deeply uncomfortable with existing under the spotlight.<\/p>\n

Portman continued acting, however, finding further recognition for her portrayal of Padm\u00e9 in Star Wars: Episode I \u2013 The Phantom Menace, released in 1999. Still not yet an adult, Portman\u2019s career was moving fast, and she even found time to study at Harvard University between roles on stage and screen. <\/p>\n

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\u2019s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate<\/a>, 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. <\/p>\n

\u201cStar Wars had come out around the time of Seagull, and everyone thought I was a horrible actress,\u201d Portman explained (via New York Magazine). \u201cI 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, \u2018Put her in Cold Mountain, I vouch for her.\u2019 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, \u2018Mike saved me. He wrote a letter so that I could get asylum in the U.S.\u2019 He did that for 50 people, and it doesn\u2019t make any one of us feel less special\u201d.<\/p>\n

Nichols didn\u2019t just help Portman professionally, it seemed as though he was there for the actor as a friend, too. \u201cWhen I was 25, I had my heart broken\u2014the 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\u2014literally peeled me off the floor.\u201d <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Sat 14 June 2025 18:15, UK You should never take for granted the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,75687,3943,17068,4242,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-184613","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-mike-nichols","10":"tag-movies","11":"tag-natalie-portman","12":"tag-star-wars","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114683594376750079","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}