She might be famous for guarding her privacy, preferring a small wedding over a lavish celebrity ceremony and taking her grandmother’s maiden name to protect her family from the limelight. But Natalie Portman has claimed that portraying the character of grief-stricken Jacqueline Kennedy taught her the virtue of celebrities giving more of themselves to the public.
Jackie – Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrain’s first English-language feature – is a searing and intimate portrait of the former US first lady in the week after her husband, John F Kennedy’s assassination in 1963.
Natalie told journalists at the American Film Institute’s AFI Fest – where Jackie was premiered – how she admired the stoic and dignified face Jacqueline put on for the public. “Even when she was going through something incredibly private, it meant something to other people, how she presented herself publicly,” Natalie, 35, said. “It’s like other people share in whatever you’re going through and that’s really impressive that she was able to do that.”
Born Neta-Lee Hershlag in Jerusalem, Natalie has taken on tough roles since starting her big-screen career. She got her break at the age of 11 inThe Professional, a tale of a hitman-for-hire who becomes the mentor to a young girl. But she turned down 1996’s Romeo + Juliet because of the age difference between her and Leonardo DiCaprio and rejected the 1997 remake of Lolita, which she deemed “sleazy.” The actor also signed on to Anywhere but Here (1999) with Susan Sarandon but only after a nude scene was dropped. “I value my private life and security way more than getting parts by flashing my body on some magazine or being a sex symbol in films,” Natalie said, in a 2000 interview.
Eventually, Natalie won a Best Actress Oscar for 2010’s psychological ballet thriller Black Swan and it was on the set of the film that she met her future husband, French dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied, with whom she is now expecting a second child. She has been tipped for a second Oscar for her performance in Jackie, with critics raving about how accurately she managed to capture Jacqueline’s voice and personality.
“The easier things were the more superficial details, like the way she talked, moved and looked,” Natalie said on the red carpet at Hollywood’s TCL Chinese Theatre. “Those are things you spend a lot of time on but it’s really the way she felt that takes the imagination and real searching. The other stuff is like learning a skill, as opposed to exploring your own depths.”
Jackie peaks with Jacqueline’s real-life strategy of painting a fairy-tale picture of JFK by using Camelot as a sobriquet for the Kennedy administration, an epitaph which stuck. “I loved that she defined herself as a wife primarily, but then lived a life that was very counter to that, where she was her own woman,” said Natalie. “It was like she didn’t know how to be any other way except exactly herself – very strong and able to author her own story. She really became the author of her own story and his.”
Fox Searchlight Pictures is scheduled to release Jackie in the US on December 2.