Natalie Portman: the traumatic events that shaped her career

Natalie Portman has been a Hollywood star for over three decades. Her career started in childhood but, with time, has become a respected and Oscar-winner actress.

Today, the image of the Israeli-American actress exudes elegance, calmness, trust, and maturity, but it hasn't always been like that.

Despite every adversity that appeared in her way, the actress moved forward thanks to talent and effort.

At just 12, the actress got her first role in a movie. It was in Luc Besson's 'Léon: The Professional' where she played Mathilda Lando.

Although at the time Portman was a minor, the audience saw her character in a sensual way. According to what she told Dax Shepard on his podcast 'The Armchair Expert', the role came with some unexpected issues...

As she revealed on the podcast: "I was definitely aware of the fact that I was being portrayed as this 'L o l i t a' figure... and that took away from my own s e x u a l i t y, because it made me afraid."

Portman continued to tell everything that came with the image the audience had created of her, but this time she did it at the CNN Women's March in 2018. There, she shared the traumatizing story of the first fan letter she had ever received.

As she recalls: "I excitedly opened my first fan mail to read a r a p e fantasy that a man had written me."

In that same speech, Portman shared another disturbing event: "A countdown was started on my local radio show to my 18th birthday, euphemistically the date that I would be legal to sleep with." Yes, these things really happened to her.

At the same time, she was facing other problems. As she told 'Jane Magazine' in 1999, when she returned to her seventh-grade class after the movie, her former friends began bullying her.

In the image, Portman with her parents in 1996.

She said: "I cried every single day when I came back from shooting 'The Professional'. My friends were not my friends. They were saying, 'She thinks she's so hot now', things like that, and it was the most painful thing I've ever gone through."

In 1994, Portman changed to a public school where she would complete high school in 1999.

After that first experience, Natalie Portman decided to hide her femininity and started to turn down roles in which she had to kiss someone, for example.

As she explained in 2018, Portman built a reputation "as a prudish, conservative, nerdy, serious young woman in an attempt to feel that my body was safe and that my voice would be listened to."

However, as she claimed on 'The Drew Barrymore Show' in 2020, these experiences helped her to be a better person.

On being bullied in school, she said: "I do think that that sort of creates your empathy, like being on that side of the teasing certainly makes you never want to make anyone feel like that ever again."

To this day, Natalie Portman feels harassed by the press. In 2021, the media speculated about the possibility that Natalie Portman was pregnant after she was photographed walking down a street.

Via Instagram Stories, the actress came forward to deny the rumors: "Hey, so I'm totally not pregnant, but apparently, it's still okay in 2021 for anyone to speculate and comment on a woman's body shape whenever they want?"

Natalie Portman graduated from Harvard University with a major in Psychology in 2015. At commencement, she made a speech that sent a clear message.

During her time in college, she was constantly feeling like an impostor: "I felt like there had been some mistake, and that every time I opened my mouth, I would have to prove that I wasn't just a dumb actress."

Her private life and romantic relationships have also been complicated. When she was 18 years old, she was alleged to be dating the musician Moby, who was 15 years older than her. Later, she would deny that this ever happened.

The musician himself fed the rumors. He released his memoirs in 2019, 'The It Fell Apart', in which he talks about his relationship with the actress. In response to the book, Portman cleared things up: "We only hung out a handful of times before I realized that this was an older man who was interested in me in a way that felt inappropriate."

The singer then replied to the actress and the public that they did, indeed, have a serious relationship. He accused Portman of lying.

She did have a romance with someone else, when she was 25. Portman told New York Magazine: "When I was 25, I had my heart broken. It was the rupture of my adolescence, the big heartbreak."

The actress remembers that it was Mike Nichols, the director of 'Closer', who "picked me up and gave me a pep talk and sent me to a doctor and straightened me out; literally peeled me off the floor."

Mike Nichols, she has claimed, was one of the few directors that worked with Natalie Portman and didn't act creepy or weird around her.

In a book about Nichols titled 'Mike Nichols: A Life', the actress assured that he was "the only older man who mentored me without there ever being a creepy element in it."

Mike Nichols was the director of 'Closer', a movie with steamy scenes for Portman and other actors. However, the actress wrote in Nichols' book: "He wants to see my bare a.. even less than my father would."

Throughout her career, Natalie Portman has experienced many concerning interactions with some producers and members of the industry. However, when talking on the subject to Porter Magazine, the actress didn't share any names.

Unfortunately, the actress had to go through some uncomfortable situations: "It was just the two of us, and only one bed was made up. Nothing happened. I was not assaulted. But that was super not okay, you know? That was really unacceptable and manipulative. I was scared."

The different experiences in Natalie Portman's life have made her the woman she is today: a respected and applauded figure in the US and the world.

Only a few people really know who was the one who broke the actress's heart at age 25. The important part is that she is now happily married to Benjamin Millepied since 2012. The couple got together in 2009, when she was 29 years old.

With everything she's been through, Natalie Portman has managed to see the bright side of things. Nobody can deny that she is a strong force, not only in Hollywood but in the entire world.