This story first appeared in the May 15 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
It's 8 a.m. in Los Angeles on a late-April morning, and Natalie Portman, 33, is not quite her usual glamorous self.
The past few weeks have been tough for the globe-trotting actress turned style icon turned writer-producer-director. First, she was in London for six days, finishing the sound mix of her new film, an adaptation of Israeli author Amos Oz's memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness, which marks her feature directorial debut; then she flew to Los Angeles, where she oversaw the movie's color-timing. In just a few hours, she'll head to Beijing for two days of promotional work as a spokesperson for Dior, and after that she'll be back in L.A. for four days before traveling to Cannes for Darkness' out of competition debut May 18.
All of which might explain why she seems so guarded about this interview. She sits, ramrod straight, plunking her iPhone in the middle of the table and hitting "record" before she has said a word, as if challenging me to quote her with razor-sharp accuracy — which, I must admit, casts a pall over our conversation.
"Did somebody burn you?" I ask.
"No," she says. "I just, when I'm talking about delicate issues, I want to make sure that everyone's accurate, you know."
This may not be the best way to start, but it does make a point: During the next 79 minutes, Portman is going to be blunt.
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