As she reprises her role in the Marvel’s Thor franchise, Natalie Portman is ready to fight a long-standing nemesis in her real life: sexism, as Josh Smith finds out in his latest GLAMOUR column, Josh Smith Meets.
“There's so much to rage at in the world, isn't there? And so few places to put it as a polite lady. It's not hard to channel rage these days,” Natalie Portman tells me, sitting in her London hotel suite wearing a demure Miu Miu black dress with a dazzling sequin collar.
We are mid-discussing her formidable fight sequences that peppered her returning to the role of cutting-edge scientist Doctor Jane Foster in Marvel’s blockbuster sequel, Thor: Love And Thunder. But this time around, Jane swaps her scientific microscope for the mystical hammer, Mjolnir - which she nabs from Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth - to become The Mighty Thor.
This was a rare role even for an Oscar-winning actor, who started working at the age of 12 and now sitting before me today at 41-years-old has notched up a near 30-year long career ranging from blockbusters like Star Wars to award-winning performances in Black Swan, Jackie, The Garden State and Closer. “It was incredible to get to play this powerful superhero,” she shares. “It's rare to get these kinds of opportunities in general and particularly as a woman, it's even rarer. So it felt really lucky. And I kept thanking Taika (Waititi, the movie’s director) every day, I was like, ‘This is so cool!’”
The actor's response to the memorable moment has been doing the rounds online.
But why, in 2022, is it still rare, or even a little shocking, to see a female superhero on our screens, like it’s not the norm for a woman to be all-powerful, multi-faceted and be able to handle herself in far off galaxies? After all, find me a woman who isn’t powerful? CAN I GET AN AMEN UP IN HERE? Does Natalie find it frustrating that we are still having to have these conversations, or it’s even commented on, I wonder?
“It's really wonderful that those conversations are happening,” she replies diplomatically, “because the conversations are what has been propelling the expansion of this and the normalization of it. That's really lit the fire under all the people in power to make more films with central female characters to make more superheroes that are female. But yes, I pray for the day when it's completely normalised, we don't have to talk about it, and it's just the way things are. I look forward to that day, but until it really is the way of the world, I appreciate that people are still propelling the conversation.”
Even when you are an all-powerful superhero, though, sexism is still a consistent nemesis. There is one scene in the movie where Gorr the God Butcher (played scarily well by Christian Bale) calls Natalie’s Jane, “Lady Thor,” in a moment of pure sexism and before delivering a killer blow, she delivers one with her tongue saying, “it’s actually the Mighty Thor, and if you can’t get that right it’s Doctor Jane Foster.” I, for one, was finger-clicking in my seat. What everyday sexism does Natalie still have to fight against, I ask?
“That's a great question,” Natalie answers whilst composing her thoughts momentarily and exercising a level of power Jane would be proud of. “The recent Supreme Court decision that has taken away women's right to make their own decisions about their healthcare, because abortion is healthcare. It is devastating to live in a country where your personhood is not given the same treatment as others. That's been the most blatant infuriating example of just feeling like you live in a country that doesn't value you and your agency and your autonomy in any way.”
The latest Thor movie also arrives at a time of great challenges to the LGBTQIA+ community, too, with some members of the Supreme Court reportedly seeking to overturn queer marriage rights, queer rights being reversed in Poland and a UK government refusal to ban conversion therapy for the transgender community. But as with the representation of women, the movie propels queer representation forward in the form of Tessa Thompson’s openly bisexual character, Valkyrie. And even if the male queer representation in a man made of rocks, called Korg and voiced by Taika Waititi, as a gay man, I felt seen in a Marvel movie for the very first time. Never have I ever been so moved by a pile of… rocks.
It’s something Natalie is proud to bring to the Marvel universe - even if it has been slightly slow on the uptake - especially to show anything is possible for her two children, Amalia and Aleph, who she shares with her dancer husband, Benjamin who she met on the set of her Oscar-winning performance in Black Swan in 2009. “I definitely feel that I want to create a world for my kids that treat all genders with their full dignity, autonomy and value in the many versions of what that means for choice and for equity in all kinds of expressions of it.”
“I see the effect on my kids of getting to grow up in a world where there are characters that represent all of humanity and all of the range of human possibility,” she continues. “And I see that how different it is, the way they're growing up versus the way I grew up when, despite of course, my daughter having fewer rights than I had growing up in a very legal way [referring to the recent Roe v. Wade ruling] the actual entertainment and creative expression that people are putting out into the world shows them that they have the full range of possibility for who they want to be, who they want to love.”
Natalie is certainly the role model in and out of her home, too, for raising your voice for others who can’t, in true Marvel fashion. Having signed open letters to defund the police, narrated the eye-opening documentary Eating Animals about animal cruelty and the environmental impact of factory farming and being one of the original signatories of the now famous 2018 letter in The New York Times, which created the Times-Up movement, Natalie is a Hollywood activist that does the work. “I feel like the past decade has been a real learning process of learning how to use my voice and seeing so much and learning so much from being in community with other women and watching my peers and colleagues use their power so wisely and generously,” she reflects.
“Those kinds of sharing conversations with other women that I work with, that's had the biggest impression on me in terms of learning to use my voice. Also, taking on different roles in my life with having the soccer team and having a different kind of role there than I do in my acting life and producing more, it all exercises different forms of your voice that have been a really big learning curve for me.”
Natalie has always bucked the curve of what is expected of a Hollywood star, even turning her back on her career at one of its many heights post-playing Princess Leia's mother Padmé Amidala in Star Wars, to study Psychology at Harvard University from 1999 to 2003. “I feel like a lot of people were kind of like, ‘Why are you going to college?’ But that was really amazing for me to get this, first of all, really strong life experience and learning experience and also the group of friends that has sustained me to this day of incredible people who are doing all different things. It’s just a really lucky, lucky thing in my life. That was really an incredible growth experience.”
Another such growth experience came from another unlikely source as Natalie isn’t just changing the game for female representation in the entertainment industry she is also campaigning for gender equality in sports, too. Natalie is the founder of the Los Angeles-based women’s Angel City football club, which with 100 investors, including Serena Williams and Billie Jean King, is the largest female-led ownership group in professional sports. But it goes further than that it gives players a cut from ticket sales and offers training to help players find careers after sport.
Becoming a multi-hyphenate has clearly empowered Natalie. “It makes you exercise different aspects of yourself because a lot of what you do as an actor is working to help create someone else's vision, namely your director. I love that and obviously advocating for your character. [But] then when you are producing or directing or running a business, which I co-run with my fellow soccer team founders with Angel City, you're in the position of creating a structure, dealing with things that come up and putting out fires and it's a different level of responsibility. It's been really interesting to find those parts of myself.”
Given all of her achievements, one thing that surprises me about Natalie is she is still conscious of, and working on taking up space even after playing a superhero. “To have this character become big, when she's Mighty Thor, she's six foot and jacked, and to understand what it might be like to go through the world like that, was really an amazing opportunity as a very petite person,” she says.
“We’ve become so terrified of the human body that we can’t even look at my two little cute nipples behind fabric in a way that isn’t sexual.”
“And then to think, ‘what does it mean to take up as much space as possible? What does it feel like to walk into a room and see over everyone's head and be able to kind of control and have people be intimidated by you?’ That is a very different way of walking through the world. Also, there's no hiding. I can walk into a room, and no one pays attention, but when you're that big, Chris Hemsworth walks into a room, and he can't help, but everyone looks at him, he's an imposing figure - of course, also very well known - but there's a difference in the physicality when you are that size.”
Has the role encouraged her in a weird way to take up more space IRL? “I definitely think so. I certainly understand that also the way you carry yourself and the way you enter space with your personality you can take up more space. It definitely made me at least recognise the first step is recognising the influence this pressure to take up as little space as possible, which is a female message we get all the time, ‘be tiny, be tiny.’”
There is nothing tiny about Natalie’s achievements and power, and I wouldn’t rule out her returning to the Marvel franchise either and leading the avengers single-handedly. But who would be her co-avenger of choice? “I definitely want to work with Tessa again”, she replies instantly. “Valkyrie is my favourite and then I do love Brie Larson is a good friend of ours too. Tessa, Brie, and I work together a lot. In our private time, we've done a lot of activism stuff together.”
So the Destiny’s Child of Avengers, is on the horizon, then? “I think you might have just come up with something brilliant,” she laughs. “The first Marvel musical.” Watch this space.
Thor: Love and Thunder is in cinemas now.
