For Israeli-born actress Natalie Portman, fielding politically charged questions about the Middle East can sometimes get wearisome.
The Oscar-winning actress has made something of a name for herself as a vocal supporter of Israel — though she has also expressed her distaste for the country’s current leadership.
“I get asked so many questions about the Middle East, and I’m like ‘Can you please just ask me about my dress? Let’s just talk about the dress!” she commented with a laugh.
“It’s a very strange place to be from,” she said. “When you say, ‘I’m for Israel,’ everyone wants to have a 10-hour political conversation.
“Everyone has a very strong, passionate opinion about it,” she added. “But I’m grateful for it. I had so many friends who asked when we were younger, ‘Who am I? What’s my identity?’ I never questioned my identity.”
In May, Portman told the Hollywood Reporter she was “very, very upset and disappointed” by Benjamin Netanyahu’s reelection to the Israeli premiership. “I’m very much against Netanyahu,” she stated.
However, she stressed that she was careful not to allow her celebrity status to be used to “you know, shit on Israel… I don’t want to do that.”
Portman’s directorial debut, an adaptation of Israeli author Amos Oz’s A Tale of Love and Darkness, was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in May. It is an autobiographical story of Oz’s childhood in nascent Israel.
She has stressed in the past that the film is not political, saying the movie “is very much about this very particular, specific family story. Of course, it happens at a crazy moment in history, which I think is a big sort of weight on their backs. It’s sort of a pressure cooker for the family, but there’s not really a political agenda behind it.”
Portman is set to play two of the 20th century’s most famous women — Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis — in two upcoming films. She will also star in two movies directed by Terrence Malick to be released this year, and will appear in the Western Jane Got a Gun, which she coproduced, alongside Ewan McGregor and Joel Edgerton.
