Natalie Portman Opens Up About Being Sexualized At 12: “I Felt Very Scared”

In a recent conversation with Jenna Ortega for Interview Magazine, Portman opens up about what it was like to grow up in Hollywood. “I think there’s a public understanding of me that’s different from who I am,” she said. “I’ve talked about it a little before – about how, as a kid, I was really sexualized, which I think happens to a lot of young girls who are onscreen.” She added, “I felt very scared by it. Obviously sexuality is a huge part of being a kid, but I wanted it to be inside of me, not directed towards me.”

Portman started filming the R-rated film Léon: The Professional when she was only 12. The Academy Award-winning actress described a particular chapter of her early career as a “long Lolita phase.” She was cast, styled, and talked about in ways that borrowed directly from the twisted obsession at the center of Nabokov’s infamous novel. “There are definitely tropes, and I think at each phase in my career, there was a different one that I was like, ‘Oh, I’ve got to avoid this.’ Obviously there was a long Lolita phase,” she said. “Then there was the long ‘chick who helps the guy realize his emotional thing’ phase for about a decade.”

“My way of protecting myself” she said, “was to be like, ‘I’m so serious. I’m so studious. I’m smart, and that’s not the kind of girl you attack.’”

“I was like, if I create this image of myself, I’ll be left alone. It shouldn’t be a thing, but it worked.”

Talking with Ortega, who also started young, brought out just how different their upbringings were. “As soon as someone mentions that they were a young actor, you start to look at them differently,” Ortega said. “There’s something really, really heartwarming but also simultaneously devastating anytime I speak to actresses from previous generations, just because their experience is so jarringly different.” She added, “It’s nice to see how much it’s changed because I’ve been very fortunate in my upbringing, in our line of work.”

“I Felt the Need to Cover My Body”

Back in 2018, Portman told People something that adds even more context to the image she curated in her youth. “I understood very quickly, even as a 13-year-old, that if I were to express myself sexually I would feel unsafe and that men would feel entitled to discuss and objectify my body to my great discomfort.” She added, “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 worth of safety and respect.”

On Variety’s Awards Circuit podcast in 2023, she said she “would not encourage young people to go into” acting. She credits her parents for their protectiveness and support. “I feel it was almost an accident of luck that I was not harmed, also combined with very overprotective, wonderful parents.”

Subscribe today to get unlimited access to all of Evie’s premium content.