Natalie Portman's Career Nearly Ruined by Star Wars: Episode I? Find Out What She Said!

Actress told New York magazine that despite the box office success of The Phantom Menace in 1999, "no director wanted to work with me"

By Corinne Heller Dec 19, 2014 8:23 PMTags
Natalie PortmanSipa via AP Images

The force of the second Star Wars trilogy was not strong for Natalie Portman career-wise, according to the Oscar-winning actress, one of the most popular in the world.

The 33-year-old played Padme / Queen Amidala, love interest of Anakin Skywalker, who later became Darth Vader, in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom MenaceStar Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith. The films were released between 1999 and 2005 and served as prequels to the original series. While the newer movies made more than $2.5 billion worldwide, critics and scores of fans of the franchise were not as impressed with them.

Portman, a former child star, began her onscreen career more than five years before her Star Wars debut. In the summer of 2001, Portman also appeared with Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman in an adaptation of Anton Chekhov's 19th century play The Seagullin New York City. Mike Nichols was the director and would go on to helm the 2004 film The Closer, which garnered Portman her first Oscar nomination. He died in November at age 83. Portman recently spoke to New York Magazine about her late friend.

"Star Wars [Episode I - The Phantom Menace] had come out around the time of Seagull, and everyone thought I was a horrible actress," the outlet quoted her as saying. "I was in the biggest-grossing movie of the decade, and no director wanted to work with me."

"Mike wrote a letter to Anthony Minghella and said, 'Put her in Cold Mountain, I vouch for her,'" she added.

Portman starred in the director's 2003 historical drama, which garnered fellow supporting actress Renée Zellweger her first Oscar.

In 2005, the actress appeared in V For Vendetta, a political thriller that made $132 million worldwide and was penned by screenwriter siblings Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski. Portman shaved her head for the film, marking the first out of two times she would transform her look for a movie.

"And then Anthony passed me on to [director] Tom Tykwer, who passed me on to the Wachowskis," she told New York Magazine. "I worked with [director] Milos Forman a few years later."

Portman starred in the Forman's historical drama film Goya's Ghosts with Javier Bardem. The movie was released in 2006, when she was 25 years old. The actress, who dated Jake Gyllenhaal and Gael García Bernal that year, told New York magazine that she had suffered a "big heartbreak" at that age and that Forman consoled her.

"I was at his apartment on the floor, and he picked me up and gave me a pep talk and sent me to a doctor and straightened me out—literally peeled me off the floor," she said.

During her time as Queen Amidala, Portman also kept busy with school. In 2003, she completed her studies at Harvard University and graduated with a bachelor's degree in psychology. In early 2005, months before Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith was released, Portman traveled to Israel, where she was born, to film the small-budget movie Free Zone. She also attended the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for one semester and took graduate courses.

After Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith was released, Portman appeared mainly in movies such as Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling LimitedThe Other Boleyn Girl and the 2010 dark drama film Black Swan, for which she lost 20 pounds and for which she earned her first Oscar, at age 29, for her role as a troubled ballerina.

Also that year, Portman signed a high-profile spokesmodeling deal: She was named the new face of luxury fashion and beauty brand Dior.

In 2011, she appeared in two R-rated comedy films, the fantasy-themed Your Highness, which flopped at the box office, and No Strings Attached with Ashton Kutcher, which made $149 million worldwide. She also played Jane Foster in Marvel's Thor, another box office smash that spurred a successful 2013 sequel, in which she reprised her role.

Also in 2011, she and boyfriend Benjamin Millepied, a French ballet performer and choreographer who had worked with her on Black Swan, welcomed their first child together, son Aleph (the Hebrew equivalent of "A"). The two wed a year later and in 2013, moved to France, where Millepied had accepted a job as director of the Paris Opera Ballet.

David Crotty/Patrick McMullan/Sipa USA via AP Images

Portman continued her acting career after the move. She can be seen next in the 2015 movies Jane Got a Gun, a western, and Terrence Malick's Knight of Cups. Also in 2015, the actress will also make her big screen directorial debut with the film, A Tale of Love and Darkness, a biopic about famed Israeli writer Amos Oz, in which she plays his mother and reunites with her Free Zone co-star Makram Khoury. The movie was filmed in Jerusalem last year.