Natalie Portman reflects on her time as a child actress.
During the episode Diversity‘s Awards Circuit Podcast, the Oscar winner, 42, told the outlet that it was “a fluke” that she didn’t get hurt as a young actress, adding that she wouldn’t advise children to enter the industry.
“I wouldn’t encourage young people to go into this,” said Portman, who has two children with husband Benjamin Millepied — son Aleph, 12, and daughter Amalia, 6. Diversity, before clarifying: “I don’t think ever; I mean like children.”
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“I feel like it was almost a coincidence that I wasn’t injured, also combined with having overprotective, wonderful parents,” she added.
Portman, who made her big screen debut in Léon: Professional at the age of 13, he said Diversity that “you don’t like it when you’re a child, but you’re grateful for it when you grow up.”
Jean Reno and Natalie Portman starred together in the 1994 film ‘Léon: The Professional’. Patrick CAMBOULIVE/Sygma via Getty Images
“I’ve heard too many bad stories to think any kids should be a part of it,” she said of children in the entertainment industry. “Having said that, I know all the conversations we’ve had over the last few years. It made people more aware and more careful.”
“But ultimately, I don’t believe children should work,” she said. “I think children should play and go to school.”
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In May, Portman reflected on her role in Léon: Professionalsaying The Hollywood Reporter that he has “complicated” feelings about his 1994 breakthrough film (Its director, Luc Besson, has since been charged and acquitted of sexual misconduct by multiple women.)
In a thriller Léonthe Oscar winner played Mathilde, a young girl who begins a mentor-mentee relationship with a hit man (Jean Reno) after her family is murdered.
When asked how she felt about the film, Portman said THR“It’s a movie that’s still a favorite, and people talk to me about it more than anything I’ve ever done.”
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Natalie Portman in ‘Anywhere But Here’ from 1999.
The Everett Collection
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“And it gave me my career,” she continued. “But it definitely is, when you look at it now, it definitely has some creepy aspects to say the least.”
“So, yes, it’s complicated for me,” she added.
Elsewhere in the interview, Portman said the allegations against Besson, 64, were “devastating.”
When the director was first accused of rape in 2018, his lawyer said THR“Mr. Besson fell off his chair when he learned of these allegations, which he vehemently denies.”
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From her own experience working with Besson, she said THR“I really didn’t know. I was a kid and I was working. I was a kid.”
“But I don’t want to say anything to invalidate anyone’s experience,” she added.
When asked what advice she would give to kids starting acting around her age, Portman said THR that she “always wants[s] say [child actors] treat it more like a game than a job because I don’t think kids should have a job.”
In the same interview, she described her early acting roles as “fun”.
“I definitely knew how to take things seriously as a kid, but I loved it,” she said. “I really, really loved it.”
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Source: HIS Education