Natalie Portman reportedly split from her ballet dancer husband Benjamin Millepied last year and has been going out on the town without her wedding band on for the past several months.
But the 42-year-old star has yet to address the status of her relationship.
On Wednesday the Oscar-winning actress lightly touched on the breakup in the 30th annual Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair magazine where she posed with Bradley Cooper, Pedro Pascal and Colman Domingo.
When asked how she feels about having her marriage written about she said it was ‘terrible.’
‘It’s terrible, and I have no desire to contribute to it,’ she said frankly to writer Keziah Weir who retorted it was not too fun to have to ask the question.
Natalie and Benjamin wed in 2012 after meeting on the set of Black Swan.
Natalie Portman reportedly split from her ballet dancer husband Benjamin Millepied last year and has been going out on the town without her wedding band on for the past several months. But she has yet to address the status of her relationship. On Wednesday the Oscar-winning actress lightly touched on the breakup in the new issue of Vanity Fair magazine
She posed on the front with Bradley Cooper, Pedro Pascal and Colman Domingo; also seen were Jodie Comer and Lily Gladstone, among others
Together they have two children: son Aleph, 12, and daughter Amalia, six.
Portman has yet to make a public comment about her split from her spouse after it was alleged that he had cheated on her with another woman.
In a January WSJ interview she talked about living in Paris with her two children but made no mention of Benjamin, which was the biggest hint yet that they no longer live together.
The May December actress also said in her Vanity Fair interview that she has been careful to protect her privacy.
‘I got very protective of it very early on. I chose a different name when I started, which was kind of an interesting way that I separated identities,’ she shared; her first film was The Professional in 1994.
‘I would get upset if someone at school called me Natalie Portman. I was like, if you know me, you know me as Natalie Hershlag at school,’ she admitted making it sounds as if she had a tough time balancing fame and real life.
‘It was kind of an extreme bifurcation of identity that I’ve tried to integrate a little bit more as an adult.
‘I felt like it was not accepting that both were part of me, that there wasn’t a “real” me and a “pretend” me, and that they didn’t necessarily have different names.
‘And it’s not just two different versions, there are multitudes of ways other people see me, both public and private, and there are multitudes of ways I see myself.
‘Somehow the intersection of all of those are part of me, and it’s important to have all of those within me and as me, as opposed to being like, that’s some external thing, this is the real thing.’
Natalie and Benjamin wed in 2012 after meeting on the set of Black Swan. Together they have two children: son Aleph, 12, and daughter Amalia, six. Seen in 2011
Portman has yet to make a public comment about her split from her spouse after it was alleged that he had cheated on her with another woman. Seen in March 2022
When asked how she feels about having her marriage written about she said it was ‘terrible.’ ‘It’s terrible, and I have no desire to contribute to it,’ she said frankly to writer Keziah Weir who retorted it was not too fun to have to ask the question. Seen in July 2022
Portman attends the Christian Dior Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2024 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on January 22 in Paris where she now lives with her two kids
But it changed.
‘As I started having kids and a family, I started realizing that maybe it was not helpful to be like, there’s two of me. I have many interactions during my day as a public person. To exclude that from my experience is not real,’ she noted.
Natalie now lives in Paris and spoke about how residing in Los Angeles part time is not that bad for her because of the choices she made.
‘I lead a very non-Hollywood life in LA. I live on the east side. I have some friends who are in the entertainment industry, but many friends who are not, and we don’t do industry things when we hang out,’ she began.
‘We’re not going to Hollywood parties, we’re having dinners at home in the backyard.
‘I actually found that living there made my experience of LA much less “Hollywood.”
‘When I would visit, it would only be for work, and I’d be staying somewhere in Beverly Hills, and I’d be having industry meetings and going to industry parties.
‘Living there made my experience much more rounded and appreciative of all the city has to offer, from nature to the arts, food to music, and of course, the people,’ she shared.
Julianne Moore, right, and Portman in a scene from May December
She also let on about a new project.
‘One thing that I’ve wanted to do, and really struggled to get, was an animation movie, and I just did my first one—or I’m still, because it’s a yearslong process.’
When asked what it was she offered: ‘I’m doing The Twits—Roald Dahl. Very exciting.’
And she said she likes to make movies with her kids in mind.
‘I love animation. And having kids, I always want to make things that they can see. I see with my kids that they watch them again and again and again and again in a way that I don’t think any other movies are watched so intensely, and therefore have such an impact on kids’ views of the world and life. You realize how meaningful they are—and how meaningful they can be.’
And she has hopes to sing.
‘One thing that I have left that I have not done is a musical. I would really love that. When I think about what made me most excited and happy and joyful as a kid, I took a lot of dance classes that were musical theater, and those were my happiest moments. I dreamed of being a dancer in a Broadway show. So to do that again would be, I think, returning to that joy.’
One of her toughest roles was early in her life.
‘When I was 16 years old, I played Anne Frank on Broadway, and that is so loaded with meaning and symbolism and larger implications. Even the centrality of Anne Frank in what we teach children, what we teach Jewish children, is so loaded and controversial. And I was very young. I think I had a sense of it, but it was later when there was commentary around it that I realized how much symbolism it held and how it was much larger than just me thinking, What was this girl like?’
