Natalie Portman on her career, Diane Keaton and maintaining Black Swan’s butt exercises

One of this year’s guests of honour at the Lumière Film Festival is Natalie Portman, the Oscar-winning actress and producer who continues to captivate audiences around the world after 30 years of filmmaking.

The now 44-year-old star of Léon, Heat, the second Star Wars trilogy, Black Swan, Jackie, Annihilation, May December and countless other beloved movies is a huge get for the festival – as evidenced by winding queues of fans outside the Pathé Bellecour theatre trying to get a last-minute ticket for the sold-out event.

During her masterclass, Portman generously, eloquently and humorously reflected on her career and her fourth decade working in the film industry.

Sadly, and once again much to the disappointment of attendees of the masterclass, the audience Q&A was skipped entirely. Whether this was the festival’s choice or Portman’s wishes, we may never know. However, it remains a black mark for events that champion themselves as not only open to accredited press but to all audience members – therefore supposed to give the public a rare opportunity to be able to ask questions with the invited talent. Increasingly reduced access to stars at film festivals for the press is not new; however, when it comes to the paying public, it feels like a sizeable missed opportunity.

Aside from the masterclass, the festival is screening a selection of Portman’s films (V For Vendetta, Black Swan, Jackie, as well as Heat – which is playing as part of a tribute to Michael Mann, this year’s Prix Lumière recipient), as well as the feature-length animated film Arco, which Portman produced with Sophie Mas under their joint banner MountainA.

Here are our key takeaways from the masterclass:

Natalie Portman – David Mouriquand

On her cinematic taste and her career choices

“What’s funny is that I didn’t grow up with much of a cinematic knowledge or appreciation. I was really seeing kind of mainstream movies. And I loved them. I grew up with The Lion King, Mrs. Doubtfire, Dirty Dancing, Pretty Woman… I was seeing big, commercial movies. It was only after I started making films that I started learning about cinematic history, and being introduced to directors that I worked with to Cassavettes, Haneke and Wong Kar-wai and Robert Bresson. All of the greats.

I was very lucky to get that education from the people I worked with. I think it gave me a broad spectrum of the kind of movies I love. I have great love for auteur, experimental work and I have great love for commercial work that is extremely entertaining. And everything in between.”

On what actresses have inspired her

“There are many. I would say Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under The Influence – that’s just maybe the greatest of all time. Isabelle Huppert in The Piano Teacher just completely blew me away. Julianne Moore in Safe. Nicole Kidman in To Die For. Reese Witherspoon in Election. Those are ones that I watch and study.”

On Diane Keaton

“Diane Keaton gave female characters the opportunity to be as complex as the male characters we commonly see. They were neurotic, they were funny, they were smart, they were emotional, they were weird. She let women be weird on screen. (…) She had this ability to do anything and she had a beautiful strangeness… Someone who was unapologetically herself, and you fell in love with her because of that.”

On her early years and starting to act in Luc Besson’s Léon

“I was very lucky because it was such a positive experience. Everybody treated me like a kid and made it feel like playing. And to this day, I still think of my work as playing. It’s actually funny because in French, the word is the same (for playing and acting – ‘jeu’). In English, it’s quite different. (Acting) is the most childlike thing to do. You’re pretending. Being an actor is acting like a child all the time. All children are actors.”

On the challenges of acting from a young age

“An actress friend once said something to me that stuck with me: ‘The thing that separates the people who are able to deal with this life is the ability to have thick skin and then thin skin.’ To deal with the public side of the life, the competition, the rejection, all that – you need to have thick skin. And then you have to be able when you work to be extremely vulnerable. The ability to switch back and forth is what it takes.”

On going to Harvard University while shooting Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace

“I’m from a very academic family and it was never a choice. (…) It was extremely important for me. I was a very sheltered kid and so for me, to have that buffer period, when you live on campus – you have this period of four years of being between a kid at home and an adult, independent in the world – it was an important buffer time for me.”

On studying psychology and whether it helped to better approach characters

“I think it’s really the same practice. It’s the same question: Why do people do what they do? What is someone feeling at any given moment? What are the interesting contradictory feelings that we have? Observation, observation, observation – watching people, noting behaviour, and trying to understand why.”