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Feminist T-shirt, also worn at the Women's March 2018. Graphics say: 'We should all be feminists.'

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Fully decked in Dior and without an inch of derrière in sight, Natalie Portman exemplified how to make a feminist statement that persuades instead of polarize. The actress showed up to the Academy Awards in a black cape from the French fashion house, embroidered with the names of female directors denied nominations in this year's awards. That the show of solidarity was so subtle made it all the more powerful, standing in stark contrast with the tawdry theatrics that have hijacked displays of feminism today.

Some of the directors boasted by Portman simply made films, such as the stripper-centers Hustlers, that simply couldn't compete with the stellar nominees of an unusually compelling year. But Greta Gerwig and Céline Sciamma were arguably snubbed, and Portman isn't wrong for caring that Little Women, a film enjoyed by many but heavily about femininity, be represented alongside a tale such as Joker, a film enjoyed by many but heavily focused on masculinity.

Portman's stunt recalls the equally talented and intelligent Julia Roberts, who protested the Cannes Film Festival's mandate that women wear high heels by quietly taking off her own halfway down the red carpet. Such a move took offense to an actual rule unfairly holding women to a double standard and made a statement against it without appearing sanctimonious or self-indulgent. Portman similarly hit the right note, disagreeing with the Academy for obviously feminist purposes, but not browbeating the audience in a manner that reeks of virtue signaling or unearned moral superiority. As a past best actress winner herself, Portman knows she holds outsize public attention, and she used it to her advantage.

Portman would wow the crowds in sweatpants, but tasteful Dior with a thoughtful message isn't half bad. Hopefully, other wannabe activists take note of how it's done.

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Natalie Portman demonstrates how a proper feminist statement is done

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Fully decked in Dior and without an inch of derrière in sight, Natalie Portman exemplified how to make a feminist statement that persuades instead of polarize. The actress showed up to the Academy Awards in a black cape from the French fashion house, embroidered with the names of female directors...

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'It is not hard to infer a connection between Natalie Portman being vegan, and also very healthy.'

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Since the age of 9, Natalie Portman has chosen not to eat meat. She said it all started because she felt close to animals, like she could relate to them in some way.

Later, as she began to learn more about the food industry, she realized that for her to feel comfortable with her food choices, she would need to become vegan.

For about the past eight years she has been completely vegan. That means that she has given up eating meat and dairy. If it comes from an animal or hurt an animal in any way, it does not touch her plate.

She even went far enough to keep her plant-based diet during her pregnancies. She and her children are vegan, and her husband, Benjamin Millepied, is a vegetarian. Why is Natalie Portman a vegan, and is that the reason she is so healthy?

Actress Natalie Portman | ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images

Portman gives up meat at a young age

When Natalie Portman first decided she was done eating meat, she was only 9-years-old. Like many children, she made the connection between animals and the food she had on her plate. While most children can pass this off, she felt too strongly that the animals deserved better.

This decision happened before she started acting, and she has been an activist ever since. As she got older, she realized that even eating dairy and eggs was unnecessary. She said that by giving up all animal-based foods, she could help the environment and keep at least some animals out of harsh conditions.

It wasn't until she read the book, Eating Animals, that she really understood the terrible conditions animals faced. She went from someone choosing not to eat them, to being someone who wants to spread the message of not eating animals.

What motivates her eating habits

The academy award winning actress, is very smart. She graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor's degree in Psychology. After that, she went to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to study graduate courses.

We bring this up to remind readers that her dietary choices are not fad diets. Every decision she makes has a reason behind it. And, saving animals is not her only quest in life.

She has been a long time activist for women's rights. In fact, she talked about the day she realized that animal rights and women's right are the very same thing. In an interview with Yahoo Lifestyle, she said that the two issues were the same.

"Only after I became active in women's issues did I realize that my veganism was related to those very issues," she said. "Dairy and eggs don't just come from cows and chickens; they come from female cows and female chickens. We are exploiting female bodies and abusing the magic of female animals to create eggs and milk."

Why is Natalie Portman vegan?

It is not hard to infer a connection between Natalie Portman being vegan, and also very healthy. She's been in the public eye since before graduating high school. Her commitment to a plant-based diet is at least part of where her good health comes from.

In a statement, she made it clear that she believes the way we treat animals is only a short leap from the way we treat people.

"Mothers are separated from their children to create milk. Animals are sick and in crowded-prison-like conditions in order to make dairy and eggs. It doesn't take a lot to draw the line from how we treat animals to how we treat humans."

She also told Us Weekly that eating animals or their byproduct isn't even necessary.

"There's like tempeh bacon, you know, coconut milk, yogurt, cheese is made out of cashews and all sorts of delicious things that they've figured out that are great replacements for those things you crave."

Reading the book, Eating Animals, changed her life so much that she decided to narrate the documentary of the same name.

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Since the age of 9, Natalie Portman has chosen not to eat meat. She said it all started because she felt close to animals, like she could relate to them in some way. Later, as she began to learn more about the food industry, she realized that for her to feel comfortable with her food choices, she would need to become vegan.

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'Only after I became active in women's issues. Dairy and eggs don't just come from cows and chickens, they come from female cows and female chickens. We're exploiting female bodies and abusing the magic of female animals to create eggs and milk.'

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Vegetarian since the age of 9, actor Natalie Portman went vegan in 2011 and regularly uses her influential voice to help animals. We're celebrating the star's brilliant mind ( did we mention that she's also a Harvard grad?) and kind heart with her most inspiring quotes about being vegan.

During her speech in front of a group of 16,000 students at WE Day-a gathering and celebration of youth activists held in Los Angeles-Natalie addressed the connection between animal rights and other social-justice movements:

Only after I became active in women's issues did I realize that my veganism was related to those very issues. Dairy and eggs don't just come from cows and chickens, they come from female cows and female chickens. We're exploiting female bodies and abusing the magic of female animals to create eggs and milk.

Sexism, ageism, racism: These prejudices all discriminate against other humans based on arbitrary factors such as skin color, sexual orientation, gender, etc. Like these ugly "isms," speciesism is a toxic mindset deeply ingrained in our society that ascribes an inferior status to those who don't happen to be human-and it results in violent consequences for animals.

Watch part of Natalie's speech here.

Mothers are separated from children to create milk. Animals are sick and in crowded, prison-like conditions to make dairy and eggs. It doesn't take a lot to draw the line from how we treat animals to how we treat humans.

On dairy farms, cows are forcibly impregnated to get them to produce milk. They're separated from their young, typically days after birth. Some mother cows have even been heard calling for their calves for days after these traumatic separations occur.

So now lots of people make fun of vegans, right? Lots of people make fun of anybody who cares about anything deeply, right? But I'm here to say, it is always a great thing to care ... whether it's environmental issues, animal rights, women's rights, equality, never be afraid to show how much you care.

Data show that Generation Z actually isn't afraid to care and is significantly more engaged with animal rights issues than previous generations. Today, 79% of young people are regularly choosing meat-free meals, they're drinking 550% more nondairy beverages than millennials, and they're refusing to dissect.

When I read [Eating Animals], that was what made me become a vegan. I think until then, I had thought, "Oh, with eggs and dairy, you're not killing animals. It's just their natural byproducts." But when I started learning about the conditions-and the environmental effect of all these animals and the impact on humans of having large groups of sick animals together, it really made me want to change immediately.

By going vegan, you can help save nearly 200 animals a year. It's one of the most effective things that an individual can do to help save the planet and combat climate change. And on average, vegans live six to 10 years longer than meat-eaters -so in addition to helping animals and the environment, you can also help yourself.
Go Vegan-Order Your Free Starter Kit Today!

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Top 5 Natalie Portman Quotes on Being Vegan | PETA

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Vegetarian since the age of 9, actor Natalie Portman went vegan in 2011 and regularly uses her influential voice to help animals. We're celebrating the star's brilliant mind ( did we mention that she's also a Harvard grad?) and kind heart with her most inspiring quotes about being vegan.

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As Portman has aged her star connotations have too, media stories have recently been interested in her political and social activism. She optimises her time to discuss environmental issues at award shows for instance. Openly discussing why she is a vegan, and informing people that she has not eaten meat since the age of nine. Her connection with good health, veganism, and environmentalism, has become more powerful to an extent than her career as an actress. Portman's way of life and argument is frequently sold to people through a artificial belief that they look like her if they follow her lifestyle. Her slim figure and youthful skin is constructed to be thanks to her diet. She claims that her position as a vegan activist derived from reading a book that she has now produced and narrated. Thus Portman's image as the 'good girl' is apparent as her activism is in aid of being kinder to people, animals, and the environment.

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A feeling of genuineness is translated in Natalie's Instagram video. She is at home, her hair is lose, she is in jeans, and a lose top. The construction of this video is more than making veganism applicable to anyone. It ingrains a sense of comfort and normality. Portman's authentic personal voice explains how to make her plant-based dish. Braking the fourth wall by smiling and looking directly into the lens she makes the individual watching feel present with her (creating a connection between her and the audience). The video presents Portman as very down-to-earth whilst obeying female stereotypes. Seeing her domesticity within her private sphere fits common associations of femininity. She is a female in the kitchen, the traditionalist norm associated with this makes it easy to accept and enjoy this star image.

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Natalie Portman celebrates her 38th birthday today (June 9), as well as a career bringing to life the complexities of her characters on the big screen. Born Natalie Hershlag in 1981 to an American mother and an Israeli father, the family moved to U.S. in 1984 and set up in Long Island, New York.

After a brief stint with modelling, Portman secured her first acting role in Léon (1994) starring opposite French actor Jean Reno. It was the first film in which her character had a troubled backstory and complex relationships with adults, which resulted in the actress changing her surname to Portman, her maternal grandmother's surname. This helped her escape unwanted attention due to the sexual undertones in the film.

Next, she appeared crime thriller (1995). Portman went on to supporting roles in Beautiful Girls (1996) and Mars Attacks! (1996), before appearing as Queen Amidala in Star Wars: Episode I-The Phantom Menace (1999). Her character appeared in further sequels in 2002 and 2005, making her a part of the Star Wars canon.

During this time, she also starred in Anywhere but Here (1999) and Where the Heart Is (2000), followed by Garden State (2004) and Closer (2004). The latter earned her a Golden Globe for best supporting actress.

In 2005, Portman starred in dystopian fantasy V for Vendetta, in which she was a broadcaster turned revolutionary. Her shaven head made her icon. She then went onto star in My Blueberry Nights (2007), The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) and Brothers (2009).

Portman, opposite Mila Kunis, starred in thriller Black Swan (2010), which won her an Academy Award for best actress. Later, she portrayed a scientist in Thor (2011) and Thor: The Dark World (2013), and took a romantic role in No Strings Attached (2011).

Portman also starred in Knight of Cups (2015) and Jane Got a Gun (2016), followed by Jackie (2016)-a film about Jacqueline Kennedy in the days after her husband's assassination-and then Song to Song (2017), which is a romantic drama set against the Austin, Texas, music scene.

In 2018, she led a largely female cast in Annihilation (2018), a sci-fi thriller in which she played a biologist who goes on a dangerous secret mission.

To celebrate Portman's contribution to entertainment and her birthday, Newsweek has analyzed data from Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic to compile her best 10 movies.
Thor (2011)
Score: 67 / 100

Rotten Tomatoes: 77 / Metacritic: 57

Plot: Thor causes a war and is banished to Earth where he falls in love with Portman's character.

Also starring: Chris Hemsworth, Anthony Hopkins and Tom Hiddleston

What critics said: "Thor is on much safer ground here on Earth. The tone is immediately different: more relaxed; comic, not cosmic." CNN
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Score: 74 / 100

Rotten Tomatoes: 80 / Metacritic: 68

Plot: Not the one with sand. Anakin Skywalker meets his destiny while trying to protect the love of his life and their unborn child.

Also starring: Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen and Ian McDiarmid

What critics said: "Episode III mainly is what it is-the climax of a sometimes grand adventure that's more than the sum of its parts, yet much less than it might have been." Wall Street Journal
Garden State (2004)
Score: 76.5 / 100

Rotten Tomatoes: 86 / Metacritic: 67

Plot: A depressed man removes himself from his medication when his mother dies and goes back home.

Also starring: Zach Braff, Peter Sarsgaard and Ian Holm

What critics said: "Mr. Braff, Ms. Portman, Mr. Sarsgaard and Mr. Holm never strike a false note as a remarkably coherent acting ensemble, and it is good to see Ron Leibman again in the small role of Doctor Cohen." The Observer
Paris Je T'aime (2007)
Score: 76.5 / 100

Rotten Tomatoes: 87 / Metacritic: 66

Plot: A film with 18 short stories about Paris.

Also starring: Juliette Binoche, Steve Buscemi and Sergio Castellitto

What critics said: "The best is saved for last: Payne's 14th arrondissement takes its time to create a Parisian epiphany that both pokes fun at an American tourist (Margo Martindale) and finds grace in her acceptance of a fragile moment of transcendence." Seattle Times
Everyone Says I Love You (1996)
Score: 79 / 100

Rotten Tomatoes: 79 / Metacritic: 0

Plot: The ins and outs of a family focusing on love and divorce.

Also starring: Goldie Hawn, Woody Allen, Drew Barrymore

What critics said: "It's a world of both serene privilege and surreal possibility, and it offers a delightful and witty compendium of the filmmaker's favorite things," New York Times
Heat (1995)
Score: 81 / 100

Rotten Tomatoes: 86 / Metacritic: 76

Plot: A thief, vowing never to get involved in a relationship he can't walk away from in 30 seconds, finds himself falling for a lady he doesn't think he can walk away from.

Also starring: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Val Kilmer

What the critics said: "When Pacino's loud, bruised cop and De Niro's canny crook stare at each other, you can read something spent and weary in their eyes and voices. The heat is hell. So are their jobs-but somebody's got to do them." Chicago Tribune
Beautiful Girls (1996)
Score: 81.5 / 100

Rotten Tomatoes: 79 / Metacritic: 84

Plot: A high-school reunion in a snowy New England town brings together a band of former classmates who go from tavern to tavern discussing sex and relationships.

Also starring: Matt Dillon, Lauren Holly and Timothy Hutton.

What critics said: "Beautiful Girls is always in touch with reality but never drowned in it." TIME Magazine
3. Black Swan (2010)
Score: 82 / 100

Rotten Tomatoes: 85 / Metacritic: 79

Plot: A dancer finds herself competing for the top spot in Swan Lake, losing her sanity in the process.

Also starring: Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel and Barbara Hershey

What critics said: "Darren Aronofsky has made one of those rare movies that gets right in your face and demands a response: Love me, hate me, just don't mess with Mister In-Between." Globe and Mail
2. Annihilation (2018)
Score: 83 / 100

Rotten Tomatoes: 88 / Metacritic: 79

Plot: A female strong team take on a secret mission.

Also starring: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez and Tessa Thompson

What critics said: "Annihilation is some heady nightmare fuel, but its most striking quality may be how little it has in common with the current trends in mainstream science fiction." Buzzfeed News
1. Jackie (2016)
Score: 84 / 100

Rotten Tomatoes: 87 / Metacritic: 81

Plot: A portrait of one of the most important and tragic moments in American history, seen through the eyes of the iconic First Lady

Also starring: Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig and John Hurt

What critics said: "[Portman is] at her best here in the moments when Jackie is quiet, when the grief, anger and doubt are in her face more than in her words." NPR

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Natalie Portman's birthday: Her best 10 movies ranked

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Natalie Portman celebrates her 38th birthday today (June 9), as well as a career bringing to life the complexities of her characters on the big screen. Born Natalie Hershlag in 1981 to an American mother and an Israeli father, the family moved to U.S. in 1984 and set up in Long Island, New York.

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For the modern moviegoer, Natalie Portman is a constant. The Oscar-winning actress has spent the last two decades transforming from role to role, going from a tiny hit girl in training ( Léon: The Professional), to a newborn anarchist ( V for Vendetta), to a mourning First Lady ( Jackie). Her next trick? Playing a tough-talking pop star in the upcoming Vox Lux.

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For the modern moviegoer, Natalie Portman is a constant. The Oscar-winning actress has spent the last two decades transforming from role to role, going from a tiny hit girl in training ( Léon: The Professional), to a newborn anarchist ( V for Vendetta), to a mourning First Lady ( Jackie).

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'She admitted that she is ‘constantly fighting’ against being valued for her looks.' - Portman admits to feeling the gaze of others and realises the meaning of her star image. The connotations of femininity and sex appeal. She exclaims wanting to challenge her own stereotype, to escape it whether that be through expressing her intelligence or goofiness to her fans.

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Natalie Portman has opened up about what it feels like to be judged for her looks, as she graces the front cover of the latest issue of Harper's Bazaar UK.

The actress looks amazing as she dazzles in a beige-coloured shirt, paired with red lipstick, for the front cover of the magazine's September 2019 issue, whilst she sported a red dress in another image.

And she admitted that she is 'constantly fighting' against being valued for her looks.

'As a woman, you are constantly fighting against only being valued for your looks, because it becomes a very tenuous thing, to be defined by the gaze of others, the opinion of others,' she said.

'And beauty is, by definition, ephemeral, it's a thing that that you can't trap in time, it's a butterfly, it lives for a second. So to make a lifetime worthwhile and have meaning cannot rest on beauty...'

The 38-year-old also admitted that in the past she had been 'socialised' to believe that she was not actually angry, and just upset.

'We've been socialised to believe that we're not feeling angry - we're feeling sad, we're feeling upset.'

She added: 'And when I realised that, there was a sudden shift in my mind, and I thought, oh my God, all those times when I would burst into tears, I was actually angry!

'I just didn't know how to express it!'

The actress is gearing up to release her latest movie, Lucy in the Sky, in which she stars as Lucy Cola, an intrepid astronaut.

When asked on the types of film roles she chooses, she revealed: 'I just feel weird if I'm at work pretending to be a mom to some kid who's not my kid. So I've been trying out wild experiences like being an astronaut or a pop star.'
The September issue of Harper's Bazaar UK is on sale on Friday 2 August 2019.
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MORE: Marvel fans react to Natalie Portman announced as female Thor

MORE: Natalie Portman hits the hair salon in Hollywood after Moby admits to acting 'disrespectfully'

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Natalie Portman admits she's 'fighting' being judged for her looks

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Natalie Portman has opened up about what it feels like to be judged for her looks, as she graces the front cover of the latest issue of Harper's Bazaar UK. The actress looks amazing as she dazzles in a beige-coloured shirt, paired with red lipstick, for the front cover of the magazine's September 2019 issue, whilst she sported a red dress in another image.

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Portman's talent is recognised on an international scale. Videos of her numerous acceptance speeches at Oscars, Golden Globes, and the BAFTA's are constantly circulating on social media platforms. Winning best actress at the Oscars for her role in Black Swan particularly reinforces her gift. Her ability to play a range of different personalities is praised in distinguished magazines such as Vanity Fair. Furthermore her online lessons also known as 'Masterclass' is a series that has been created thanks to her success and familiarity as a quality actress.

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Portman is part of the feminist revolution, shining light on gender inequality particularly in her industry. She has been quick to call out Hollywood, namely through her custom Dior outfit at the 2020 Oscars. She honoured the female directors who weren't recognised for their talent by embroidering their names on her cape. She employed her identity as a fashion figure and matched it with a powerful message. This meant that her outfit choice gathered much awareness surrounding the underrepresentation of women in award season. Her social media is an outlet for activism, for example she posts on a weekly basis about the latest updates on the TimesUp movement. Persuading people to respond and join as collective identity rather than polarizing people Portman proves her rebellious image. Working against the system of patriarchy she utilises her platform to coax a revolution. Her numerous speeches contradict the connotations of innocence and vulnerability gained in her younger years. Her rebel social type is undeniable as she has proved time and time again, she is a feminist.

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Embodying unconventional femininity Portman presents herself as an intellectual. She extends expectations by identifying herself as a book worm, she frequently mentions that she studied at a prestigious university. Perhaps in an attempt to dissolve artificial connotations she has become attached to through her work in film and fashion.

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'Are you going to amend the book and state Natalie’s actual age or is that lie still ok?' - Comment from one of Portman's fans on Moby's Instagram page.

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As some time has passed I've realized that many of the criticisms leveled at me regarding my inclusion of Natalie in Then It Fell Apart are very valid. I also fully recognize that it was truly inconsiderate of me to not let her know about her inclusion in the book beforehand, and equally inconsiderate for me to not fully respect her reaction. I have a lot of admiration for Natalie, for her intelligence, creativity, and animal rights activism, and I hate that I might have caused her and her family distress. I tried to treat everyone I included in Then It Fell Apart with dignity and respect, but nonetheless it was truly inconsiderate for me to not let them know before the book was released. So for that I apologize, to Natalie, as well as the other people I wrote about in Then It Fell Apart without telling them beforehand. Also I accept that given the dynamic of our almost 14 year age difference I absolutely should've acted more responsibly and respectfully when Natalie and I first met almost 20 years ago. Moby

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18.2k Likes, 2,733 Comments - moby xⓋx (@moby) on Instagram: "As some time has passed I've realized that many of the criticisms leveled at me regarding my..."

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This gossip has only strengthened Portman's status and relationship with her fans. The age old idiom that no publicity is bad publicity runs true as she reinforced her image as a respectable and empowered woman by standing against the claims made by Moby. The article presents her as far removed from the dated concept of what a woman should be. The construction of the text seems to side with Portman as it shows intimate photos of her and her husband portraying her happy marriage, inferring she is above this rumour.

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Natalie Portman has had a tough few weeks following Moby's shock allegations in his new memoir that he briefly dated her when she was 18 and he was in his 30s, claims which she has strongly refuted.

But the actress was focusing on her personal life on Tuesday, enjoying a date night with her husband Benjamin Millepied in Los Feliz.

The Black Swan star, 37, looked totally enamored with her spouse of seven years as they shared a sweet embrace in the street.

Natalie laced her arms around her French choreographer partner as they waited by the roadside, looking head-over-heels for one another.

The Oscar-winning star was dressed down for her outing, throwing a grey hoodie over a printed T-shirt and black jeans.

Benjamin, who was casually clad in a white T-shirt, couldn't take his eyes off his wife as they kissed by the kerbside.

Natalie and Benjamin met on the set of Black Swan in 2009 and welcomed son Aleph two years later.

The pair tied the knot in August 2012 and the second addition to their family, daughter Amalia, arrived in February 2017.

Natalie's public outing comes after Moby publicly apologized to her - days after the actress contested the nature of their past relationship and characterized him as a 'creepy old man.'

The climb-down comes after the singer boasted of his relationship with the then 18-year-old in his memoir Then It All Fell Apart, before doubling down on his recollection when Portman disputed his version of events and labeled them 'disturbing.'

In his apology, posted on Instagram on Saturday, he said he accepted he was wrong for including their so-called relationship in the book without giving her forewarning, and that given the 14-year age gap between the pair, admitted he should have 'acted more responsibly and respectfully' when they first met in Austin, Texas in 1999.

He wrote: 'As some time has passed I've realized that many of the criticisms leveled at me regarding my inclusion of Natalie in Then It Fell Apart are very valid.

'I also fully recognize that it was truly inconsiderate of me to not let her know about her inclusion in the book beforehand, and equally inconsiderate for me to not fully respect her reaction.

'I have a lot of admiration for Natalie, for her intelligence, creativity, and animal rights activism, and I hate that I might have caused her and her family distress.'

The Porcelain singer added: 'I tried to treat everyone I included in Then It Fell Apart with dignity and respect, but nonetheless it was truly inconsiderate for me to not let them know before the book was released.

'So for that I apologize, to Natalie, as well as the other people I wrote about in Then It Fell Apart without telling them beforehand.

'Also I accept that given the dynamic of our almost 14 year age difference I absolutely should've acted more responsibly and respectfully when Natalie and I first met almost 20 years ago.'

His apology comes days after he made it clear he believed they were dating, despite the age difference.

He said at the time: 'I recently read a gossip piece wherein Natalie Portman said that we'd never dated. This confused me, as we did, in fact, date.

'And after briefly dating in 1999 we remained friends for years. I like Natalie, and I respect her intelligence and activism.

'But, to be honest, I can't figure out why she would actively misrepresent the truth about our (albeit brief) involvement.

'Ps I completely respect Natalie's possible regret in dating me (to be fair, I would probably regret dating me, too), but it doesn't alter the actual facts of our brief romantic history.'

Earlier in the week, Portman told Harper's Bazaar: 'I was surprised to hear that he characterized the very short time that I knew him as dating because my recollection is a much older man being creepy with me when I just had graduated high school.

'He said I was 20. I definitely wasn't. I was a teenager. I had just turned 18.'

The mother-of-two also criticized the Moby's publisher for not checking the facts of the story, saying she thought it was a 'deliberate' attempt to sell books and called it 'disturbing'.

In his book, Moby said he was relieved when she ended their 'relationship'.

He said they met for the first time at a show he performed in Austin in 1999.

He then describes seeing her again at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards when she approached him, writing: 'I was thirty-three and she was twenty but this was her world.'

The awards were on September 9, just three months after Natalie's 18th birthday.

He then claims that when she was studying at Harvard, he visited her and they spent one night 'kissing under centuries-old oak trees.'

'At midnight, she brought me back to her dorm room and we lay down next to each other on her small bed.

'After she fell asleep I carefully extracted myself from her arm and took a taxi back to the hotel,' he said.

Moby also described in his book how he had 'high hopes' for a night of 'vodka and sex' with Lana Del Ray in 2006 when she was 20 and he was 50.

He claimed they kissed after a date but that she declined sex because she had heard he was promiscuous.

Rey's representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.

Moby shot to stardom as in the 1990s with his techno album Play.

He has since documented how he blew his millions on drugs and alcohol and has spoken openly about his sexually deviant ways.

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Natalie Portman has dinner date with husband Benjamin Millepied

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Natalie Portman has had a tough few weeks following Moby's shock allegations in his new memoir that he briefly dated her when she was 18 and he was in his 30s, claims which she has strongly refuted. But the actress was focusing on her personal life on Tuesday, enjoying a date night with her husband Benjamin Millepied in Los Feliz.

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No, the diaper-astronaut movie doesn't have any diapers in it. That was pretty much the main scuttlebutt on Lucy in the Sky when the film, from director Noah Hawley and out October 4, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last month. The movie-based pretty loosely on the real-life story of a NASA astronaut who was arrested for attempted kidnapping after a bizarre series of events involving a long drive and some adult diapers-was immediately framed in that one single context. Which is understandable, if unfortunate. It's a nutty story of pathetic true crime; it's the kind of thing we crave right now.

But to Hawley's credit (and to his cowriters, Brian C. Brown and Elliott DiGuiseppi), Lucy in the Sky is a bit more high-minded (heh) than serving up the easy diaper disaster. Instead, the film peers into this strange story, closes its eyes, and imagines a great cosmic kind of crisis, an existential yearning and terror looming in the heart of America. I'm a sucker for movies or plays or whatever that regard a maligned, made-fun-of figure and see the grand, the soulful, the poetic in her sordid little strife. In that way, Lucy in the Sky is maybe almost a queer film, or queer adjacent; a tale of addled, doomed assertion of truest self with a wild diva at the center.

Okay, okay, I might be making Lucy in the Sky sound a bit more exciting than it actually is. In truth, Hawley's film has some drag to it, as he repeats motifs and ideas again and again in a churning loop, hoping to whip some air into his heavy movie. He doesn't quite bring the film to the profound place I think he wanted it to go, but he does get kinda, sorta close. I appreciate an attempt like that; nervy and dreamy and attuned to the big ache at the center of life.

Hawley is an interesting entity. Previous to Lucy in the Sky, he's worked mainly in books and television, writing some well-regarded novels and creating the award-winning FX series adaptation of the Coen brothers' Fargo. That anthology show has the same melancholy whisper that Lucy does, a timbre that creaks and sighs with deep weariness. Life is sort of sad and silly, both Fargo and Lucy suggest, a wistful assessment that is hard to disagree with. Then again, Lucy also bears similarities to Legion, Hawley's illegible and irksome series, based on comic books, about a would-be superhero with a troubled mind. Lucy takes a few Legion -esque veers into aesthetic pretentiousness, particularly with its ever-shifting aspect ratio, the size of the screen expanding and shrinking in rapid mutation. It's a distracting gimmick whose point needs only be made once: Yes, the bounds of the title character's world keep shifting. We get it.

The film's chief asset, more than Hawley's curvy brain, is its star, Natalie Portman. Portman's been on a journey of discovery of her own in the post- Black Swan years, taking on a carefully curated set of challenges that have all demanded an intense kind of actorly focus and commitment. She daringly, and thrillingly, courted camp as a grieving first lady in Jackie. She prodded at questions of identity in the grim, enveloping sci-fi wonderment Annihilation. And she did whatever the hell she was doing in Vox Lux. Portman's gone full breakneck, and it's a joy to watch, an actor so drawn to the outsize edges of her craft.

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Review: Natalie Portman Transcends the Limits of Lucy in the Sky

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No, the diaper-astronaut movie doesn't have any diapers in it. That was pretty much the main scuttlebutt on Lucy in the Sky when the film, from director Noah Hawley and out October 4, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last month.

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Portman over the last 10 years shifted from the indie film industry into higher budget Hollywood blockbusters. It would be reasonable to suggest her status as a quality actress solidified within this time period. A variation of character types became more pronounced in her later film work and therefore a more flexible use of her star image emerged. Her unstable star image is suggestive of her change or more open attitude to presenting her authentic identity. In other words her film character evolution is self reflexive, as her image over time has conjured up more meaning so people have learnt more about the real Natalie, therefore her connotations have adapted. Its as if Portman has worked to destabilase the childhood connotations she gained in her earlier work as the more current films present her as a authoritative, powerful, and intelligent.

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The image and associations from the 'Natalie Portman' that we see particularly in film and advertisements juxtaposes Natalie Portman, the authentic persona these multimedia examples present. The qualities she embodies are that of an average human being not someone who has been exposed to the lime light since her childhood. Her overall star image is somewhat paradoxical as her elegance and presence as a fashion icon is crushed by this commonness, outlining the tension between the competing spheres. These constructions give an insight into Portman's personality more so then her imageability.

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Speculation, gossip, interviews, and social media, have a tendency to focus upon Portman's personal sphere. Whether it be from Natalie herself or footage from the paparazzi she is frequently portrayed as this perfect maternal figure. Her nuclear family unit is one that satisfies the idealised family set up. Showing Natalie in the context of her offscreen and unofficial life often portrays her as focused on her nuclear family set up and romance with her male counterpart. Healthy, happy, heterosexual, white, therefore conforming to societal norms. Her thriving marriage and family of four presents the public with this postfeminist example of the perfect woman. Successful in her career and predominantly family orientated. This image is contradictory in some respect to her feminist and independent woman persona, she is interpreted as significant due to her position as a wife and mother not a individual woman.

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Fashion advertising is one of Portman's secondary media industries. Her star image is exchanged in its most marketable form, selling her as a commodity. Her sexualisation and compliance with traditionally femininity makes her commodification easy. She appears flawless particularly in fashion promotion. Her image and presence particularly in these contexts function as a spectacle, she fits popular culture's ideology of womanhood. She's petite, elegant, white, and desirable. Often supporting an outfit described as simplistic and conservative but still sexy. Much media frames her perfection as something that women should aspire towards.

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Film was and arguably still is Natalie Portman's primary industry. Her early films were predominantly of the thriller genre, she was commonly the innocent, lonely, and generally complex daughter. She was repeatedly the little girl who needed to be babied, even as she passed her teen years she was still presented as juvenile. Her unrelatable characters meant her star image was hard to simplify. Portman was however chiefly defined by the men in the her films, often existing under their authority. This partly explains the focus on her personal relationships in her adult life, her star persona often centres around her relationship with men (her husband Benjamin). In addition her seductive behaviour in all these films can arguably explain her stance as a sex symbol and later work with top fashion house Dior.

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Portman is emblematic of culture industries such as film and fashion however this comedic sketch shows her fun loving public personality. Her laughter and silliness makes her appear real and ordinary. This highlights a real binary opposition in  her star image as she is presented as both artificial and authentic.

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'It’s definitely a relief to be out of the phase where you’re supposed to be adorable.' - Natalie Portman sums up her later film career as a more accurate depiction of her. Her movement from playing the charming daughter has resulted in her leading ex

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"It's definitely a relief to be out of the phase where you're supposed to be adorable," says Natalie Portman one recent summer morning, after she's rushed her two kids out the door. The actress entered the Hollywood system at the tender age of 12, when she filmed Luc Besson's The Professional, and now, at 38, finally feels she's aged out of a certain kind of role-wide-eyed and whimsical yet surprisingly perceptive-that she's played with more depth and shimmer than most. Who can forget Portman in Garden State, her 2004 movie with writer-director-actor Zach Braff, holding her giant headphones and telling Braff in her character's Jersey accent, "The Shins, you know 'em? You gotta hear this one song. It'll change your life, I swear."

"It certainly is stifling to be the one who's enacting someone else's idea of how a young woman should behave," Portman says. "I've seen a real change [in the industry] since I was 20. But not a total change; you still see those roles of just being a dream girl or whatever some person wants you to enact."

In the twisted ballet thriller Black Swan, Portman threw that dream girl under the bus-or the barre. It was a spectacular way to bid farewell to Cute School, by burning it down and getting an Oscar to boot. She also met her husband, dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied, on the set.

Today, Portman is focused on different kinds of parts. Or, more accurately, more nuanced parts are now being routinely offered to her: "I'm into women who are interesting to watch because they're as confusing, and confused, as we are," she says. "That's my favorite character to play: the one who messes up, but you understand what's going on to make her do that."

In this fall's Lucy in the Sky, Portman portrayed the psychological unraveling of Lucy Cola, inspired by the real-life story of NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak and her romantic entanglement with fellow astronaut William Oefelein. Lucy in the Sky, directed by Fargo showrunner Noah Hawley, posits that after her trip into space, Cola was thrown into such an existential crisis, with no real insight or coping skills, that she was driven to the point of madness. What's particularly noteworthy about Cola's story is that the bigger questions about what we're doing here, and what "here"even is, have usually been considered the territory of men, especially in film.

Cola, it's important to say, is not the most honorable character. She has an affair with her colleague (played by Jon Hamm, at his Hammiest charming-but-broken-man role ever), then engages in criminal activity against him and casts a fellow astronaut (Zazie Beetz) as her romantic rival. She's neither a hero nor an antihero. She's a woman sent spiraling into the deep of her own life, which is why, Portman says, her story is a feminist one. "When you show a woman being a complete human being, with the bad as well as the good, that's feminist. It's a humanist way of seeing people."

Another layer to Portman's evolutionary relationship with Hollywood is her involvement with the Time's Up movement. Before 2017, her friendships were almost all outside the film industry, save for a handful of actors like Rashida Jones. The isolation was never clearer than when she was in a crowd of her peers. "When I went to the Oscars in 2009, I was just standing there, and felt totally scared and intimidated and lonely by the whole experience," she remembers. "And then going to the Golden Globes in 2018, it felt like going to a party with friends. We were all like, 'Oh, this is what it feels like; this is why it's fun for other people.' "

Time's Up not only has extended her friendship circle with industry folk-including actors Reese Witherspoon (a producer on Lucy in the Sky), Brie Larson, and America Ferrera, and director Angela Robinson-but has spawned a powerful network for trading experiences.

"If we don't talk to each other, we can't share, we can't get information, we can't get angry and organize together. It's actually really important to talk," Portman says. "Something we've been talking about is sharing salary details with each other, because right now it's such a taboo. It's actually a real way that we can help each other, to be like, 'Hey, this is what I get paid. This is how I negotiated this.' "

Portman made the news earlier this year when she publicly contradicted Moby's version of events in his memoir that the two dated when she was 20 and he was 33. (After a mansplaining post, the musician eventually apologized.) She doesn't want to be drawn into the subject anymore ("It was weird," she says with a laugh), but it was a relief to many women that she broke from the usual reticence to talk about her personal life to correct the record.

For all her understated, luminous intensity, there's tangible proof that Portman is gaining more confidence in her own voice, just in time for Hollywood to embrace its full, grownup power. The reputation of the serious young actress who went to Harvard will follow her, but there are worse things to live down. She explained the origin of "Serious Natalie" in a speech at the 2018 Women's March: She dove into that persona as protection against an industry sexualizing her when she was so young.

These days, her public life doesn't have to reflect or deflect anything she's doing on-screen. In fact, she's emboldened to cast the two as distinctly different: "If I'm going to spend time being another person, I'd rather it be a completely different experience than what my life is like."

Styled by Charles Varenne. Hair by Mara Roszak for Leonor Greyl Paris; makeup by Nina Park for Dior. Manicure by Millie Machado for Essie; produced by Michelle Hynek at Crawford & Co Productions.
This article will appear in the November 2019 issue of ELLE, on newsstands October 22. GET THE LATEST ISSUE OF ELLE

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Natalie Portman Is Done Playing Your Manic Pixie Dream Girl

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"It's definitely a relief to be out of the phase where you're supposed to be adorable," says Natalie Portman one recent summer morning, after she's rushed her two kids out the door.

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'You are very elegant both of you, you seem to like each other a lot ... he must enjoy the way you look at him.' - This comment suggests the fan has seen this image as a sincere declaration of love for her husband. The 'in the moment' picture capture has constructed a sense of authenticity. Furthermore the word elegant in reference to Portman reaffirms this common connotation.

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Spent last night toasting @ladanceproject and my talented husband @benjaminmillepied!

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281.9k Likes, 750 Comments - Natalie Portman (@natalieportman) on Instagram: "Spent last night toasting @ladanceproject and my talented husband @benjaminmillepied!"

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Her education and interest in science showcases her intelligence but also reflects the character she plays in Antihalation (2018).

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Opening in theaters this weekend, the new biopic Jackie takes on the myth of America's Camelot in the moment of its fall, as First Lady Jackie Kennedy loses her husband, her home, her hero, and her illusions all in one fateful pull of Lee Harvey Oswald's trigger. Chilean director Pablo Larraín uses an outsider's eye to depict not only the familiar myth of the Kennedy years, but also the often unaddressed uncanniness of Jackie Kennedy. Though there have been movie Jackies before, never has there been a film so fixated on her insane baby voice, her beautiful blank mask of a face, or her deliciously campy love of home décor. And who better to lead us into Jackie's collapsing fairy tale than Oscar winner Natalie Portman - herself the adult-child bride of a generation?

Natalie Portman is one of America's most well-respected actors, having built her career for over two decades as a remarkably poised star whose worst scandal is probably a series of embarrassing-but-hardly-incriminating emails with Jonathan Safran Foer. But for all her placidity as a celebrity, as a performer, Portman's presence mirrors Jackie Kennedy's unsettling mixture of maturity and precociousness, and this has been true from the very first time she graced the screen in Luc Besson's assassin thriller Leon: The Professional. Though Jean Reno had the title role, most of the film's hype was built up around Portman as Mathilda, the child hell-bent on murder, whose character is balanced on the boundary between girlhood and teenhood as if on the blade of a knife. With Portman flitting coquettishly around her decades-older costar, it's a film that only a French filmmaker could get away with making, and Leon was a cult film hit. From the creepy spectacle were born a thousand pervy Halloween costumes - hi Rooney Mara, hello Zoe Kravitz - and in Portman, one lifelong movie star.

Portman was inundated with offers after Leon, and her choices following that initial brush with stardom were telling, exposing both Portman's interests as a young artist and the potentially exploitative way she was perceived by the industry. Tim Burton passed the wide-eyed dark-child baton from his former collaborator Winona Ryder to the young Portman with Mars Attacks!, Michael Mann cast Portman as Al Pacino's suicidal stepdaughter in the crime drama Heat, and for her one pleasant family film, Beautiful Girls, Portman played the sweet and self-described "older than her years" girl-next-door who tempts Timothy Hutton with her adolescent crush. Even as a teen, Portman hovered somewhere in the in-between, mothering her mom Susan Sarandon in Anywhere But Here, yet still not mature enough to face real motherhood outside the utopic bubble of the local Walmart in Where the Heart Is.

By now, Natalie Portman has become such a Vogue-approved, Oscar-confirmed institution that it can be uncomfortable to recall the breathless Brooke Shields-esque hype that surrounded her when she first debuted. But if retracing the steps of Portman's ascendence is a reminder of the inappropriate attentions of Hollywood's starmaking machine, watching those first few Portman performances has a second degree of interest that can only be attributed to Portman's own artistic development. Most performers tend to shed their child personas completely once they age into new roles - Natalie Wood rebelled with good cause from her start as a dubious Santa-denier, Drew Barrymore's bad-girl phase broke her out of E.T. fame, and Scarlett Johansson went from horse whisperer to man-eater - but Natalie Portman has never totally ditched the persona she built as an adolescent. Where she was once famous for playing an oddly sexualized grown-up child, as an adult, her powers as a performer are never greater than when she's playing a oddly sexualized, childlike grown-up.

As Portman began the transition to those quasi-adult roles, George Lucas flipped the script for Star Wars by casting the barely legal Portman as the elder love interest to the young Anakin Skywalker, who sprouts from child prodigy to leading man over the course of two films. Meanwhile, Mike Nichols brought Portman in to anchor the quartet in Closer as a stripper with a heart of gold and - surprise! - wisdom beyond her years. Wes Anderson eventually got onboard, too, bringing Portman into his dollhouse worlds as the most covetable grilled-cheese-eating doll of all in The Darjeeling Limited. But of all of Portman's "not a girl, not yet a woman" roles, the most memorable might be her turn in Zach Braff's 2004 romantic comedy Garden State.

Though it was highly regarded by the Sundance set when it premiered, Garden State is by now correctly regarded as the worst movie of all time - yet it is often unacknowledged that of all the bad things happening in Garden State, Natalie Portman is intriguingly maybe the worst of all. She's the Manic Pixie Dream Girl taken to its logical extreme, at once spastic and cutesy and unconvincing even as she is idealized by her man-baby costar and director. If part of the abject horror of watching the movie is inherent to a script that thinks meet-cutes should happen while dogs hump Zach Braff's legs, it can't be denied that Portman's eagerness, her persistent freaky baby quality, only makes the spectacle more mesmerizing. To be sure, no actress could have saved Garden State from itself, but it's Portman who takes the film from forgettably bad to operatically bad.

But if Garden State proved that the grand weirdness of Portman can easily swing into disaster, the very same freakishness paired with the right project, the right filmmaker, and the right moment can make for work that's equally and operatically sublime. In 2011, Portman won an Oscar for her turn as a ballerina twirling on the brink of insanity in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, her girlish voice alarming as she cries from inside a bathroom stall like a lost teen at the school dance, "He picked me, Mommy."

Black Swan brought every element of Portman's prior performances into focus, making the quasi-sexual undertones of her earlier work explicit by marrying the tawdry story of a maybe-virgin unhinged with everything that was already striking about Portman's presence onscreen, from her diminutive frame to the void of her emotional presence. Black Swan became a hundred-million-dollar smash and a major pop culture touchstone of this decade, with Portman's Nina Sayers as the demented, sexually repressed object of a mass cultural obsession. It's an unusual niche Portman has found for herself, but if Peter Pan complexes are rare to encounter in women at the movies, and maybe even rarer to encounter in life, Portman has made herself an unshakable icon of women stuck in transition. With Jackie, it's to this state of transition that Portman returns.

In the end, what's interesting about Natalie Portman is that all of the qualities that make her popular as a celebrity - her beauty, her poise, her conservative style, her respectability - are exactly at odds with the qualities that make her great as a movie star. If on a magazine cover, Natalie Portman is easily glossed into her most palatably respectable image, onscreen what makes her potent are all the parts of her persona that are unpalatable - the line readings that raise the hairs on your arms, the unrecognizable emptiness that sometimes overtakes her pretty face. For all of Portman's fame as a celebrity who inspires the best from the young girls who admire her, in the privacy of the movie theater Portman is free to become the spectral nightmare of what happens to those very same ambitious girls when they are unable to grow up.

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Opening in theaters this weekend, the new biopic Jackie takes on the myth of America's Camelot in the moment of its fall, as First Lady Jackie Kennedy loses her husband, her home, her hero, and her illusions all in one fateful pull of Lee Harvey Oswald's trigger.

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A sense of authenticity is evoked as she speaks about her narratives of struggle in relation to growing up, being a women in the public eye. This speech at the Women's March 2018 creates a sense of closeness and togetherness encouraging women to see her as a relatable celebrity or friend, rather than an A-list actress.

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Natalie Portman Had an Embarrassing Texting Accident with Meryl Streep

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While actress Natalie Portman's 2010 Black Swan role was one of her more harrowing performances, there was one hugely positive outcome to starring in the psychological thriller (well, besides winning an Oscar and all). Portman actually met her current husband, French dancer Benjamin Millepied, on set of the film, which he choreographed and performed in.

Natalie Portman recently opened up last Sunday at Vulture Festival in Hollywood, California about starring in the twisted ballet drama and her current spouse, according to . When asked about the excitement of meeting her husband and winning an Oscar all from Black Swan, she definitely downplayed her Academy Award and emphasized her significant other. "Yeah. The husband more," she admitted. "It was really special and making it was really wonderful and so fun. It was really incredible." When you rave about working with your spouse more than earning a gold statuette, you know the love is real. She also received a Golden Globe, BAFTA Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, and Critics Choice Award (just to name a few) for playing the notorious Swan Queen character.

The duo got engaged in December 2010 and officially tied the knot two years later on August 4, 2012 at a private home in Big Sur, California. The nighttime Jewish ceremony featured a vegan dinner to accommodate Portman's lifestyle, and she stunned in a custom-made Rodarte tea-length A-line gown with an illusion neckline and long sheer sleeves. Laura and Kate Mulleavy, the sister combo behind Rodarte, also designed Portman's black feather tutu for her Black Swan role, so she landed a sweet fashion connection from the film, as well. While she kept her wedding day look feather-less, Portman topped it all off with a flower crown and short veil.

Rumors that Millepied, 40, and Portman, 36, got married in secret began circulating way before their actual wedding, when the sweethearts were spotted at the 2012 Oscars wearing what appeared to be matching wedding bands. But, much to everyone's surprise, they actually said "I do" months after the awards ceremony. Millepied proposed to Portman with a classic-cum-modern, halo setting engagement ring from jeweler Jaime Wolf, who also designed the couple's misleading bands from recycled platinum and conflict-free diamonds.

Portman and and her ballet-dancing hubby currently share two children together. The couple had their son, Aleph, 5, in 2011, and now have a 9-month old daughter, Amalia. Portman gave birth to Amalia just days before the Academy Awards, for which she received a nomination for Best Actress for her role in Jackie. If her wedding dress was any indication of her killer style, it's no surprise that Portman also had notoriously to-die-for maternity style.

The award-winning actress dedicated her Black Swan Oscar's acceptance speech (while wearing yet another Rodarte design) to her "beautiful love, Benjamin, who has now given me my most important role in my life." This achievement came just a few months after giving birth to their son. From on-set dancing partners to real life partners, you can't find a love story much cuter than theirs.

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Natalie Portman Gushes About Meeting Husband Benjamin Millepied

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While actress Natalie Portman's 2010 Black Swan role was one of her more harrowing performances, there was one hugely positive outcome to starring in the psychological thriller (well, besides winning an Oscar and all). Portman actually met her current husband, French dancer Benjamin Millepied, on set of the film, which he choreographed and performed in.

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This candid (so somewhat genuine) paparazzi video of Natalie with her family shows the happy set up. Her husband kisses a child's forehead and Natalie smiling and laughing carries her daughter in her arms. This showcases an idealised family unit, and emphasises Portman's family-based private life.

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EXCLUSIVE - Natalie Portman And Husband Take The Kids On A Family Trip

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Her coherent persona is made abundantly clear as she captioned this post 'the real me.' We get a candid true self image of her enjoying her food. She comes across as unapologetically normal, and highly relatable.

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The real me. #veganbanhmiburrito by #tacostumadre

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619.8k Likes, 6,481 Comments - Natalie Portman (@natalieportman) on Instagram: "The real me. #veganbanhmiburrito by #tacostumadre"

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She regularly posts an image with #whatnatreads and gives commentary on her latest read.

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Excited to read my friend, Jonathan Safran Foer's new book, We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast... about how not eating animal products, even for one meal a day, can make a big positive difference in the environment. This is a great holiday present too! #DecemberBookPick #WhatNatReads

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126.9k Likes, 713 Comments - Natalie Portman (@natalieportman) on Instagram: "Excited to read my friend, Jonathan Safran Foer's new book, We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet..."

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If there was one woman impatient for time to be up in Hollywood, it was certainly Natalie Portman. The actress has been on the front lines of the recent activism that has swept Hollywood since the October Weinstein bombshell.

In a new Buzzfeed interview, Portman continues to air her rage and indignation for all the world to read. One of her primary grievances against the film industry is the underrepresentation of women across all positions.

"What feels so revolutionary for us is daily life for men," said Portman. "Men are used to sitting around a table with all men, men are used to being at work with all men; for us, it feels radical. I've had wonderful male mentorships, wonderful male colleagues - that exists. But we've completely lost female mentorship, and missed out because you just don't get exposed to it as much. It's just rarer because of the lower percentage of women in every position of power."

Portman's upcoming movie, "Annihilation", features five women in leading roles, an opportunity that Portman says is tragically rare. More often, she's the only woman in the room.

Portman also talks about finding inspiration in Reese Witherspoon, an actress who started producing her own films after seeing a dearth of good scripts for women, especially women getting older.

"I get a lot more than a lot of other women, and the stuff I get, I'm like, what? With big leading roles, so often motivations are bad things happening to the children. I don't want to play that! Literally, if you take that out, 90% of what's sent to me, I can't do. Or sexual violence. The number of times you're raped onscreen - there are other things that can motivate women and shape their emotional worlds. It's definitely limited."

When asked about signing the 2009 Roman Polanski petition, Portman is blunt about her regret. Her response to a question about whether or not Woody Allen's career should be over, however, is less direct.

"I don't think that's what the conversation should be about. I think it should be about: Why didn't Elaine May make a movie every year? Why didn't Nora Ephron make a movie every year? Where's the female version of Bill Cosby? Why don't we see any Asian women in films? There's so much art that's being lost by not giving opportunities to women and people of color. Let's not talk about what man's career is over."

Let's hope that Natalie Portman and her allies will create a Hollywood that will be chock-full of solid roles for little girls and elderly women alike.
Becky Scott is the editor of The Schmooze. Follow her on Twitter, @arr_scott
Natalie Portman Talks Feminist Revolution In Hollywood

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Natalie Portman: 'What's Revolutionary For Us Is Daily Life for Men'

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If there was one woman impatient for time to be up in Hollywood, it was certainly Natalie Portman. The actress has been on the front lines of the recent activism that has swept Hollywood since the October Weinstein bombshell. In a new Buzzfeed interview, Portman continues to air her rage and indignation for all the world to read.

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The due to be realised book reinforces her status as an independent woman. She has invented a narrative that aims to empower young girls by incorporating a diverse range of female characters. The read encourages girls to feel represented in literature and strive to achieve beyond their wildest dreams. She has combined both her activist and leadership skills with her position as a mother, to create a product that encompasses what she largely spends her time campaigning for (feminism and veganism). Sympathising with animals and women this product is symbolic of Portman's beliefs and stray away from the artificial persona surrounding her acting and fashion career.

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Natalie Portman is an Academy Award-winning actress, director, producer, and activist whose credits include Leon: The Professional, Cold Mountain, Closer, V for Vendetta, the Star Wars franchise prequels, A Tale of Love and Darkness, Jackie and the forthcoming Thor: Love and Thunder. Born in Jerusalem, Israel, she is a graduate of Harvard University, and now lives with her family in Los Angeles. Natalie Portman's Fables is her debut picture book.

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Natalie Portman is an Academy Award-winning actress, director, producer, and activist whose credits include Leon: The Professional, Cold Mountain, Closer, V for Vendetta, the Star Wars franchise prequels, A Tale of Love and Darkness, Jackie and the forthcoming Thor: Love and Thunder.

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Happy almost Thanksgiving! This is my favorite #plantbased Thanksgiving recipe that can be either sweet or savory. I used butternut squash, leeks, cauliflower, mushrooms (for savory tarts) and apples (for sweet tarts), but you can add whatever fruit and veggies you prefer. Recipe below. Ingredients: Leeks Cauliflower Mushroom Butternut squash Apples Vegan puff pastry Onions Salt Olive oil Avocado oil Directions: In 4 separate pans, sauté: 1. Peeled, cored, sliced apples in maple syrup and cinnamon 2. Cubed butternut squash and chopped onions in olive oil with salt 3. Chopped Mushrooms and garlic in olive oil and salt 4. Chopped leeks and cauliflower in avocado oil and salt While veggies are cooking: 1. Prepare tray w/ parchment paper + preheat oven to 400. 2. Cut defrosted vegan puff pastry into squares. Once veggies and fruit are cooked through: 1. Add the ingredients on top off the puff pastry. 2. Pinch squares at corners to make little walls around the puff pastry (as seen in video!) 3. Drizzle olive oil on top of the savory ones. 4. Put in oven for 10 min or until pastry is cooked through (mine took 15)

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240.5k Likes, 1,832 Comments - Natalie Portman (@natalieportman) on Instagram: "Happy almost Thanksgiving! This is my favorite #plantbased Thanksgiving recipe that can be either..."

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Why Natalie Portman Wants You to Eat Less Meat

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Natalie Portman with her Dior dress for all of the female directors who weren't nominated for Oscars

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BREAKING: The @timesupnow Legal Defense Fund + @aclu_nationwide + #Fightfor15 workers filed 23 new cases vs. @McdonaldsCorp for sexual harassment at their restaurants! Help us tell @McDonalds #TIMESUP before their shareholder meeting on Thursday - add your name to our letter. (Link in bio)

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31.4k Likes, 376 Comments - Natalie Portman (@natalieportman) on Instagram: "BREAKING: The @timesupnow Legal Defense Fund + @aclu_nationwide + #Fightfor15 workers filed 23 new..."

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For some actresses, it takes a while to find their fashion footing. But when you glance back at Natalie Portman 's style through the years, it's near impossible to find a look-even early on in her career-that isn't elegant, feminine, and perfectly executed.

"Natalie has been famous for a long time, but even from the beginning, she always had a clear sense of her personal style," says stylist Kate Young, who has been working with the 35-year-old Oscar winner since she starred in 2004's Garden State. "It was important to her to project a certain kind of image, so we spent time deciding what she was into and more importantly, what she wasn't."

Right off the bat, Young says that Portman gravitated toward vintage ("it's an eco choice"), strapless necklines over asymmetrical, and rich, warm colors instead of blues and greens. Yes, she knew what she liked as a young 20-something, but her stylist was quick to point out that there was still a lot of room for experimenting. "Her choices are classic, but when you look closer, there's always a twist or something more complex about them too," says Young.

And that's why you'll probably never see her in something too simple. "She notices a designer's point of view and those couture details like intricate embroidery or beautiful fabrication. And she certainly appreciates when fashion ultimately becomes a piece of art."

Keep scrolling to see Portman's 10 best looks of all-time. And for more stories like this, check out the June issue of InStyle, available on newsstands and for digital download May 12.
VIDEO: Natalie Portman Quotes to Get You Through the Day

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Natalie Portman's Stylist Breaks Down Her 10 Best Red Carpet Looks Ever

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For some actresses, it takes a while to find their fashion footing. But when you glance back at Natalie Portman 's style through the years, it's near impossible to find a look-even early on in her career-that isn't elegant, feminine, and perfectly executed.

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The red vintage Dior number fetched the huge sum as it went under the hammer yesterday

The vintage Christian Dior dress that Natalie Portman wore to this year's Oscars had many admirers when she hit the red carpet, with one in particular, who stumped up a whopping $50,000 to buy it at auction yesterday.

The strapless silk organza gown went under the hammer online and was sold to a mystery London-based bidder who will add the design to their collection of Haute Couture pieces.

The Black Swan star, who is an ambassador for the French fashion house and fronts the brand's Miss Dior Cherie fragrance, borrowed the gown from vintage New York dealer, Rare, which upon its return put it up for auction through 1stdibs.com.
OSCARS 2012: RED CARPET FASHION
The actress' red polka dot printed dress look, from Christian Dior's spring/summer 1954 collection, was masterminded by stylist Kate Young, who works closely with Rare's owner, Juliana Cairone.

Young told Intothegloss.com: 'She was actually going to wear another dress but then I got a call from Rare Vintage and she was like, "You should see this dress for Natalie." So we went and she put it on, and it needed zero alterations, and Natalie was like, "This was meant to be, wasn't it?" And I said, "I guess it was."'

She added: 'Natalie wore a dress that she fell in love with. It was the perfect dress on the perfect girl. I think it was also a great tribute to the modernity and timelessness of vintage fashion.'

Hear, hear.
NATALIE PORTMAN: STYLE HIGHS & LOWS OSCARS 2012: RED CARPET FASHION

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Natalie Portman's Dior Oscars dress sells for a whopping $50,000

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The red vintage Dior number fetched the huge sum as it went under the hammer yesterday The vintage Christian Dior dress that Natalie Portman wore to this year's Oscars had many admirers when she hit the red carpet, with one in particular, who stumped up a whopping $50,000 to buy it at auction yesterday.

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Portman's consistent elegant lady image is highlighted by her role as brand ambassador for the prestigious Dior. Since 2010 her advertisements, posters, and social media posts, for Dior have reaffirmed her conservative aesthetic as the brand is famous for its vision of elegance and infinitively feminine designs. Her critically acclaimed films attract an audience of high-culture and upper to middle class identities. Portman's close connection to this demographic offers advertisers the perfect tool to appeal to their target market.

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51.2k Likes, 552 Comments - Natalie Portman (@natalieportman) on Instagram: "Happy Valentine's Day! 🌹#missdiorforlove #diorparfums @diorparfums"

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It's a challenge representing style icon Jacqueline Kennedy on the red carpet, but Natalie Portman held her own with a simple black dress at the Hollywood Film Awards on Sunday night.

The perfectly coiffed Portman, expecting her second child with husband Benjamin Millepied, showed off her baby bump, telling USA TODAY she was "honored" to attend the first awards show of the season.

"I'm still mobile," Portman told us on her way to accepting the Hollywood Actress Award for Jackie. Portman, 35, plays First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in the turbulent days following the assassination of her husband, President John F. Kennedy.

Portman kept her look simple and classic last month when she stepped out to show off Jackie at the New York Film Festival.

At Sunday's Hollywood Film Awards, Portman was introduced on the stage by actress Susan Sarandon, who praised Portman for her "integrity, grace, authenticity and humor." The two first worked together in 1998 on the film Anywhere But Here.

Sarandon praised Portman for starting as a child actor in 1994's The Professional and thriving in Hollywood more than 20 years later as a writer, director and producer. But Sarandon was as impressed with how Portman has carried herself off the movie set in that time.

"Let's just say she has been in this business for that long, and she's never been busted for a DUI, she hasn't made the tabloids, her parents are fantastic and she's a great mother," said Sarandon. "That gives me hope as a parent, especially with children happily in the business."

Portman gave respect to Kennedy from the stage.

"This (movie) is about a woman maybe who was known first for being a wife, but then she became someone recognized on her own merits," said Portman. "It's an incredible, and unfortunately rare, opportunity to be able to portray someone so complicated, who had so many aspects of herself. And to look at her humanity."

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Natalie Portman channeled elegant 'Jackie' at the Hollywood Film Awards

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It's a challenge representing style icon Jacqueline Kennedy on the red carpet, but Natalie Portman held her own with a simple black dress at the Hollywood Film Awards on Sunday night. The perfectly coiffed Portman, expecting her second child with husband Benjamin Millepied, showed off her baby bump, telling USA TODAY she was "honored" to attend the first awards show of the season.

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Portman's pose in the 2019 Vogue front cover is reminiscent of her Oscar-award winning role as the ballerina in Black Swan. The elegance many have seen in the character Nina is mimicked in this issue not only through her appearance but through the graphics. 'Poise' and 'polished' construct a conservative image. Connotations such as tasteful and dignified are extractable when perceiving Portman's star image.

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Natalie Portman Teaches Acting | Official Trailer | MasterClass

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'Black Swan brought Portman other things as well, most notably a pregnancy and engagement to the dancer Benjamin Millepied (amazingly, his real name), and although there’s nothing in these turns to startle a jaded Hollywood observer, they together change the stakes of Portman’s career.'

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For those who have been checking in on Natalie Portman's career the way they'd watch a TV run of -in chunks, in excerpt, mostly during ad breaks on the lower channels-recent weeks have brought some indication that it's time to still the remote for a while and reach for a large bowl of popcorn. Last month, Portman appeared in her first romantic-comedy lead, playing a sex-hungry, socially stunted medical resident opposite Ashton Kutcher. That same week, she took home her second Golden Globe. She's favored for the upcoming best-actress Oscar, meanwhile, having already scooped up a Screen Actors Guild honor; the awards come to Portman (not her real name) not for her recent, tear-jerker release but for , a divisive movie heralded as the artistic flash point of her career. Black Swan brought Portman other things as well, most notably a pregnancy and engagement to the dancer Benjamin Millepied (amazingly, his real name), and although there's nothing in these turns to startle a jaded Hollywood observer, they together change the stakes of Portman's career. Since appearing on-screen for the first time in the '90s, Portman has been a quiet enigma in the world of her profession. Now she's coming to resemble something more: a window onto the industry's future.

Five-foot-three, credentialed at Harvard, and equipped with a smile so startlingly intimate it seems to call for special MPAA mention, Portman cuts a strange path through the field of Hollywood celebrity. It's not because of her biography per se: A lot of movie actors go to fancy schools, and even more wear many hats over the course of their public lives. What sets Portman apart is her puzzling ambitions. Though she's spent nearly 20 years under klieg lights, the career she has been reaching for is a mystery. During a single visit to Cannes a few years back, Portman promoted both Star Wars: Episode III-Revenge of the Sith and , a tiny bilingual Amos Gitai production shot in Israel and Jordan on a shoestring budget. Her public taste and personality flickers between a celebrity's glib superficiality and an artist's sedulousness. (Asked once for some books that influenced her in O: The Oprah Magazine, she directed readers to a midcareer Robert Hass poetry collection.) In an industry that rests in large part on the strength of public image, it remains unclear whether Portman is a daughter of the red carpet, striking a pose of highbrow devotion, or a cerebral small-film artist who got dragged into the blockbuster machine.

In fact, this difficulty in pinning down Portman's goals is the key to understanding her career. Although she's often said to carry the anachronistic charms of Audrey Hepburn, Portman is, almost more than anyone else, a star born of this moment. The zigzags and juxtapositions of her work echo her generation's unsettled aspirations; their resonance across the board is crucial to her image both on-screen and in the mainstream eye. Widely driven but impossible to pin down, Portman has brought a new style of ambition into public stardom.

From the start, Portman's career has been propelled by two conflicting drives: a push toward creative seriousness and an effort not to get immersed in any one pursuit. Portman was born in Israel and grew up mostly in a Long Island suburb; shortly before middle school, a Revlon model scout "discovered" her inside a pizza parlor. Lots of kids model and end up pleased with the exposure, but Portman (supposedly by her own afflatus) used the open door for leverage into more ambitious work. At 11, after a round of auditioning and a few curious ventures, she got cast in her first, heady feature role: Acting opposite Jean Reno in Luc Besson's 1994 film The Professional, Portman played a 12-year-old nymphet manqué, a moody orphan with a Louise Brooks bob who tries, childishly, to earn the love of a middle-aged assassin. It is an actor's movie, and an offbeat one, and the Portman that it brought to light feels today like a revelation: gawky, anti-glamorous, something of a tomboy, totally dissolved into the role.

That on-screen tenor didn't last. Spurred in part by The Professional's reception as a mildly transgressive film (the American Spectator described it as "at times disturbingly suggestive of kiddie porn"), Portman started casting herself in shades of the closest thing to virtue that the 1990s offered: achievement. On late-night shows, she chatted about her stellar academic performance; in picking parts, she increasingly tended toward serious characters settled in, or reaching for, some sort of inner power circle. In 1999, she got decked out as Padmé Amidala in Star Wars: Episode I-The Phantom Menace-a potentate so stiff and cold that, in all but a few crucial details, she resembled a large piece of furniture.

By the time Portman appeared in Anywhere but Here (late 1999), a film based on a Mona Simpson novel, this serious, chilly affect had become a steady feature of her image on-screen. Anywhere but Here is a mother-daughter story, but it also manages to trace a generational seam: Susan Sarandon plays a woman trying to recapture the winds of young-boomer caprice in midlife, leaving her Midwestern husband behind and moving out to Beverly Hills with dreams of glamour and freewheeling romance, while Portman is her furrow-browed high-school daughter, a kind of proto- organization-kid who hits the books and extracurriculars and falls into a high-school romance only with a dorky classmate who delivers soulful exegeses of Nietzsche. If you were a young person of a certain cast around the turn of the millennium, there is a good chance that Natalie Portman slipped into your own heart near this time, too-not least of all because, increasingly, she hardly seemed to be donning a role at all. Anywhere but Here ends with her character leaving the ditzy mother in the airport to fly to Brown. The fall the movie appeared, Portman paused her acting and matriculated up to Cambridge, Mass.

And so the image of the multitalented grind got ingrained in her biography, too. At Harvard, Portman had the kind of college career more closely associated with a bet-hedging striver than a movie star in the first flush of fame. She worked as a research assistant in a couple of laboratory studies, one on visual imagery and another on frontal-lobe activation in infants. She held a spot in Jorie Graham's application-only poetry workshop, one of Harvard's most coveted and creatively rigorous courses. (Zadie Smith subsequently turned the workshop à clef in .) And she got a gig as one of Alan Dershowitz's research assistants after submitting what the professor has described as dazzling, intellectually innovative work in seminar.

Was this a movie star going through the motions of engaged academic life to seal her reputation-or a student of creative and intellectual ambition, shielding her passions behind the glaze of a celebrity career? The answer might have gotten clearer as Portman's mature career took shape. Instead, it has grown more opaque. Over the past few years, she has taken parts in films of varying indie-ness, tried her hand at writing and directing ( two shorts, both of which premiered in 2008), and tossed around the idea of trying to publish fiction. Seen in this light, Portman's much publicized head-shaving (for V for Vendetta) and pole-dancing (in Mike Nichols' tour de force ) were gestures of devotion to the cinematic product over public image, art over ego. In another light, though, these are merely easy, hammy poses of artistic seriousness, proof of an organization kid's needy drive for cultural credentials and good deeds. After Harvard, Portman took some time to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; she also donates to the Jane Goodall Institute, is a principled vegetarian from childhood ( turned vegan), and has gone on speaking circuits advocating microfinance for developing nations -an interest, she's gone out of her way to say, that required lots of extra study. When the academy nominated Portman for her first Oscar, she told people, "I'm still not awesome." That broached a question: Where, exactly, does Natalie Portman's idea of awesomeness lie?

Even when Portman has given hints toward an answer, it's been unclear what manner of striving those hints suggest. Once, in an interview, she described her experience of celebrity in terms of "double consciousness"-W.E.B. Du Bois' term for a black American's experience of seeing himself through white eyes, of identifying both as part of the American whole and as an African descendant in a racist culture. She was pilloried for the apparent suggestion that centuries of persecution shared something with pressure to effect a breezy manner on Letterman. (Portman subsequently apologized and clarified the remark's context.) Beyond her choice of words, though, there was the strange decision to drop a canonical abstraction into an interview with Allure magazine in the first place: a clumsy affectation, maybe, meant to burnish Portman's image as a brainy star-or else a sign that she was genuinely out of sync with the glamour world and, as the Du Bois citation itself strains to suggest, living something of a double inner life.

Confusion about where Portman stands in her ambitions isn't, in fact, just a function of her own path. It's an ambiguity extending through the upper strata of her generation. Portman's peers make up a demographic widely perceived as a legion of overdriven dilettantes, a group of young people alternately pushed to wild multispecialization by some unknown inner fire and stunted by an incapacity to choose among those paths. The demographic archetypes are well-known: bleary students working well past midnight at the college newspaper, then rising before dawn for sports; thirtysomething strivers who have changed careers three times trying to find their gold-paved boulevard and forestalled adult life as a result. The trouble here is not ambition (that's a given) but committing to a goal for that drive: Is the point to hit virtuoso's stride in art, in influence, in public service? If many of us feel a closer affinity to Portman than we do to other movie stars, it's not purely because she seems to drink less deeply of the Hollywood well. She is a public figure whose attempts to be all things while committing her soul to none-to draw millions at the box office, to be a fearless small-film artist, to turn her education toward social good-echoes the conflict in our own ambitious drives, our need to keep every iron burning hot for fear of losing our glow. She's replaced an older form of movie-star restlessness (the kind that zoomed toward nothing but the spotlight and that made a mess of lives) with a new one.

That new model of stardom is what's on the block in her recent activities. Portman will turn 30 this year, and she will become a celebrity mother, and she will probably receive a lifelong mark of vocational stardom in the form of an Oscar statuette. What's at stake in these distinctions isn't so much her career-that seems pretty pat-as her style of aspiration. Black Swan, the story of an intense young person trying to transmute her ambition into art, works partly because it plays off Portman's identity as a hyperconscientious ingénue. Yet the movie's portrait of ambition misses a quality central to her drive. Portman is no single-minded grind; she is a public figure shaped by goals so disparate as to be almost irreconcilable. And although it's fair to suspect she'll emerge from this year's plaudits at the top of her field, that success could have a disconcerting effect-both on her career and on us. In committing to this final, adult level of distinction, Portman may end up leaving her generation, and the freshest thing about her success, in the dust.

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Natalie Portman: A movie star for a generation of overprogrammed children.

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For those who have been checking in on Natalie Portman's career the way they'd watch a TV run of -in chunks, in excerpt, mostly during ad breaks on the lower channels-recent weeks have brought some indication that it's time to still the remote for a while and reach for a large bowl of popcorn.

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This film is praised by the feminist community for its leading five female characters. Portman playing biologist Lena, served as the lead protagonist personifying a relatable and empowered woman. She embodies more contemporary traits of femininity, namely bravery, intelligence, and authoritativeness. Natalie's character explores deadly territory in order to save her husband who is in a coma. Turning the tables on gender expectations she plays a women saving a man. The narrative accompanied with the female heavy cast puts Natalie's work as a feminist into action. The cumulation of Natalie’s roles show contradicting character facades. When considering her various acting jobs we can arguably see her own personal character arc through the transition of the binary opposites she has portrayed, from a vulnerable youth in her earlier works to the strong and empowered leads she represents in more recent works. She is no longer the vulnerable daughter rather she is the leader of a fierce group of women.

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Playing one of the first female astronauts to travel to space Portman's character Lucy is far from innocent. The audience are constructed to empathise with Lucy as she goes through a existential crisis. Lucy and her male comrade face shocking obstacles on their travels, however the narrative remains focused on Lucy's state of mind. She cheats on her husband and shows little consideration for her daughter back on earth. Exhibiting a subversion of stereotypical femininity Lucy is an unusual female protagonist. However this is one of Portman's latest and arguably most female empowering movies. Her feminist and independent woman status is strengthened by her performance in this movie, as she tests the boundaries of femininity and empathy. Whilst her character conducts herself at many points in a disagreeable manner the viewers are inclined to root for her.

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Portman played the role of Jackie Kennedy, the numerous things Natalie has in common with this historic figure gives insight into the reasoning behind her taking on this challenging role. The film presents two sides to Kennedy, the side that was publicly enjoyed and embraced. That being her idolised style and cultural significance. However the film also divulged into her alternative persona, at home she wasn't so soft and girly. The double personality of Jackie gave Portman the capacity to show audiences her most traditionally feminine manner, but also her serious side. Opening up her star image to more interpretation.

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Portman plays Lauren, the unsettled stepdaughter daughter. Due to her depression Lauren results in trying to commit suicide. This convoluted character embodies similar connotations to Mathilda, especially if one considers her dependant relationship with the male lead (in this case its Laurens father). Her position within the narrative overall is unclear as her enigmatic complexity means her fate remains a mystery.

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The name Nina translates to little girl, keeping with Portman's typecast her character is babied and vulnerable. Despite her being older she continues to play the conflicted daughter. Twenty eight year old Nina is not only controlled by her mother but her perverted male dance teacher. Sexual undertones (between Nina and the teacher) loom and manifest into what some may deem an exploitative relationship as the narrative unfolds.

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Portman's achieved status all began with her role in this film. Playing the damsel in distress its notable that her character, Mathilda, wasn't too dissimilar to other characters that followed in her early acting career. The flirtatious Mathilda character attached unshakable sexual connotation to Portman's star image from a disturbingly young age. The sexual undertones are juxtaposed by her charming and strange personality. The complexity of Mathilda doesn't stop there, she is also portrayed as an isolated daughter from a broken home.