Natalie Portman and Chris Hemsworth in Thor Love and Thunder (promo pic)
“Thor: Love and Thunder,” which was just released, sees the return of Oscar winning actress Natalie Portman in the role of scientist Jane Foster. After the film’s release Portman in an interview with England’s the Daily Mail once again opened up about how she was sexualized by many people when she was just 13 years old.
The now 41 year old Israeli born mother of two spoke out about what it was like when she started out in Hollywood as just a young girl in an interview with the Daily Mail. Natalie Portman, Portman was just 13 when her first movie “Léon: The Professional” came out. At the time she says she was sexualized by the press. The movie was directed by Luke Besson who has been accused of inappropriate conduct over the years with actresses who performed in his movies and who has been married several times to actresses much younger than himself.
This is not the first time that the Thor: Love and Thunder Star has discussed this matter openly. When a guest on actor Dax Sheppard’s podcast called “Armchair Expert With Dax Shepard” in 2020, Natalie Portman spoke about how she was made into a “Lolita” and had her personal sexuality was harmed as a result of her first movie “Leon: The Professional.”
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“I was definitely aware of the fact that like, I was being portrayed,” explained Natalie Portman at the time. “Like mainly in the kind of journalism around when the movies would come out — as this Lolita figure and stuff.”
And now the Thor: Love and Thunder star told The Sunday Times, “I think, in that time, it was very normal. Some of it was the types of roles that were being written and some of it was the way journalists felt entitled to write about it.”
“I remember reading a review of myself when I was about 13 that mentioned my breast buds,” she added. “It was like, I’m not going to be seen that way, because it felt like a vulnerable position and also a less respectable position, in some way, to be characterized like that.”
On a lighter note, Natalie Portman also spoke about how she “bulked up” to play an action hero for the first time as she does in Thor: Love and Thunder.
“It’s pretty unusual and wonderful to be tasked with getting bigger as a woman,” said Portman, who went through a strict training regimen to put on muscle for the role. “Most of the body transformations we’re asked to make are to be as small as possible and there’s an emotional and sociological correlate to that.”
“For someone to say, ‘Let’s see how much strength you can have,’ is a completely different psychological space to inhabit,” she said. “It was an incredible point in my life to say, ‘You’re going to be the fittest, strongest version of yourself.’”
Portman’s trainer Naomi Pendergast told Us Weekly that she did “five sessions a week and did not miss one session for the whole time period we trained.”
“The initial goal was to build arm and abdominal definition,” Pendergast . “We also worked on stability and agility for injury prevention as Natalie had some dynamic stunt scenes that required her to move, twist and land in various positions.
