For Natalie Portman, a serious, Academy Award­–winning marquee actress, there are good reasons for appearing in an action franchise like Thor: The Dark World. “You get to look at Chris Hemsworth in tights and a cape all day,” she said at a Cinema Society screening on Wednesday. Hemsworth, Portman acknowledged, is “easy on the eyes.”

She also says that her co-star is down to earth and naturally charismatic. “He can kind of sit back, doesn’t have to be the center of attention, putting on a show all the time,” Portman said. “He’s wonderful to be around, and you can feel it on-screen.”

Hemsworth plays Portman’s love interest in the movie, and the romantic scenes had them both cracking up. “Chris and I had such a hard time keeping a straight face together,” she told VF Daily. “We just had a giggling problem, which our crew did not find amusing.”

Portman’s character is a scientist, and as such, her action stunts were mainly limited to running and falling down. “But I had some scenes where I’m up on a wire, which is pretty fun because you get to fly, sort of.”

Portman is now in preproduction to direct her first feature film, A Tale of Love and Darkness.

“It’s exciting, really, to just be working with a group of people,” she told VF Daily. “You know, movies have these moments of magic where a whole group works together and has beautiful moments, like an orchestra, where everyone’s feeling each other and making music together. That’s what you hope for.”

After the screening, Howard and Beth Stern, Scott Adsit, Peter Berg, Nigel Barker, Sebastian Stam, and Downton Abbey’s Lesley Nicol headed to the Marlton Hotel for a Dior Beauty–hosted party.

VF Daily caught up with AnnaSophia Robb, who dished on her Carrie Diaries wardrobe. “The clothes are pretty fantastic,” she said. Gossip Girl costume designer Eric Daman is the mastermind behind the show’s 80s-era looks. “He’s so good at mixing and matching,” Robb told us. “You know, it’ll be a couture piece with, like, a Top Shop skirt or something.”

She had been shooting a scene on the Upper East Side that day. “This episode I have a prom dress that I’m wearing, and it’s vintage 1980s, one-of-a-kind, and then we’ve altered it, and it has a sort of Oscar de la Renta cut on the bodice,” she said.

The series is a Sex and the City prequel in which Robb plays a teenaged Carrie Bradshaw. “I ran into Cynthia Nixon downstairs at a Broadway show, in the bathroom,” Robb told us. “I was at the counter, and I went, ‘Oh, hi, I’m on the Carrie Diaries show. I’m a big fan,’” she said. “It was just kind of one of those New York run-ins.”

Had Nixon seen her show? “No. She had no idea,” Robb laughed. “Which is the best part.”