Natalie Portman has never been your fame-and-glory-obsessed
actress. We all know that. We just didn't realize she was this much above the fray. "I don't know where it is," she
tells The Hollywood Reporter of the
Oscar she won for Black Swan. "I
think it's in the safe or something. I don't know. I haven't seen it in a while."
The award, she says, is a "false idol" she doesn't
want to worship. Which, okay, fair enough, she's got bigger things on her mind,
like the upcoming Cannes film festival premiere of her directorial debut, A Tale of Love and Darkness. She's not
searching for big kudos or box-office bucks from that one, either, as she
demonstrated by firmly deciding to make the movie in Hebrew. And, did we mention
she adapted the screenplay from the memoir by Amos Oz herself?
In the interview with THR, the Israel-born actress also steps out of the box to
express her thoughts on forgiving John Galliano (she does) and the recent re-election of Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu. "I am very, very upset and disappointed that he was
re-elected," she says. "I find his racist comments horrific. However,
I don't — what I want to make sure is, I don't want to use my platform [the
wrong way]. I feel like there's some people who become prominent, and then it's
out in the foreign press. You know, shit on Israel. I do not. I don't want to
do that."
Clearly, Portman is not one to take the easy path. She and
husband Benjamin Millepied are raising their 3-year-old, Aleph, in Paris, just as anti-Semitism in Europe is on the rise. Though she admits to feeling
nervous about that, Portman tells THR, "I
like being a stranger in a place. You're kind of an outsider, and I think
that's what makes you. It's the only way I've ever known."