Natalie Portman has ”100 stories” of sexual misconduct in Hollywood.
The ‘Black Swan’ star says she has experienced sexual harassment in the movie industry many times.
She said: ”When I heard everything coming out, I was like, wow, I’m so lucky that I haven’t had this. And then, on reflection, I was like, okay, definitely never been assaulted, definitely not, but I’ve had discrimination or harassment on almost everything I’ve ever worked on in some way.
”I went from thinking I don’t have a story to thinking, Oh wait, I have 100 stories. And I think a lot of people are having these reckonings with themselves, of things that we just took for granted as like, this is part of the process.”
Natalie recalled one particular time when she was invited on a plane with a producer, only to find he had made a bed.
She added: ”Nothing happened. I was not assaulted. I said, ‘This doesn’t make me comfortable’ and that was respected but was super not OK. That was really unacceptable and manipulative. I was scared.”
And the 36-year-old actress used to try avoid taking on roles with sexual scenes as she didn’t want to be thought of as a Lolita.
Speaking at Vulture Festival in Los Angeles, she shared: ”There was definitely a period where I was reluctant to do any kind of kissing scenes, sexual scenes. Because for my first roles, the reaction people would give in reviews was to call me a Lolita and things like that, and I got so scared by it.
”And I think that’s also got to be part of our conversation now: When you’re defensive as a woman against being looked at that way, that you’re like, ‘I don’t want to’ – what do we close off of ourselves or diminish in ourselves because we want to protect ourselves?”
