In a new interview with Harpers Bazaar, Natalie Portman has shared how she had “lucky early experiences of failure” with her first film, The Professional, and then Star Wars, and how that spurred her on, “I’m going to make another one. I’m going to show them”.
“I’m a very simple person,” Portman tells me. “I just want a word game, a cooking-competition show, a good meal, and I’m happy.”
I wonder if or how these looser moments jibe with Portman’s sense of control and her perception of success. “I had lucky early experiences of failure,” she says. “I know I’ve been also very lucky to have a lot of successes that have balanced it out. But I mean, for example, my first film, The Professional, got horrible reviews and had no box office. And then I made Star Wars. I was 16, and that got murdered. It was a huge success financially, but all of it was ‘They ruined the franchise. None of them can act. They all suck.’ ”
I offer that that kind of criticism, at least for me as a teenager (and I imagine for many others), would have been crippling. Portman found it motivating. “I think it was an amazing early lesson in how to read really bad things about yourself and then be able to be like, ‘I’m going to make another one. I’m going to show them,’ ” she says. “I don’t remember talking to anyone about it. I didn’t want to show anyone that I was hurt or anything.”
Read the interview in full here.
