Hollywood star Natalie Portman shot to fame as a 13-year-old actor in the 1994 movie Leon: The Professional. However, things were not all gold and glittery for the actress as the film also made headlines for its s*xualization of Portman’s character. The actress in a new interview, doubled down on the criticism of her lovable but controversial debut movie. The actress claimed that she has complicated and cringey feelings towards the movie.
Natalie Portman, in Luc Besson’s French film Leon: The Professional, played the role of a young Lolita figure named Mathilda, who was in the movie shown in costumes apparently inspired by Marilyn Monroe and Madonna. Read on to know more.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Natalie Portman, while talking about the film, said, “It’s a movie that’s still beloved, and people come up to me about it more than almost anything I’ve ever made, and it gave me my career. But it is definitely when you watch it now, it definitely has some cringey, to say the least, aspects to it. So, yes, it’s complicated for me.” When asked if Luc was a crucial figure in her career and the career of other young women, the 41-year-old actress further stated, “I really didn’t know. I was a kid working. I was a kid. But I don’t want to say anything that would invalidate anyone’s experience.”
In 2018, the actress spoke about receiving a fan letter with a r*pe fantasy, Natalie Portman asserted, “At 13 years old, the message from our culture was clear to me. I felt the need to cover my body and to inhibit my expression and my work in order to send my own message to the world that I’m someone worthy of safety and respect.”
Portman continued, “The response to my expression, from small comments about my body to more deliberate statements, served to control my behaviour through an environment of s*xual terrorism.”
The actress further, in a different interview in 2020, said, “I know I was s*xualized in the ways that I was photographed or portrayed, and that was not my doing. That becomes a part of your public identity.’ In 2020 she said: ‘Being s*xualised as a child, I think, took away from my own s*xuality because it made me afraid.”
Natalie Portman concluded, “’It made me feel like the way I can be safe is to be like, ‘I’m conservative, and I’m serious, and you should respect me, and I’m smart and don’t look at me that way.”
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