Here are some photos of Natalie Portman this week at the Venice Film Festival. She’s been in Venice to support two films, Jackie and Planetarium. For her Jackie photocall and premiere, Portman wore two Valentino looks. I loathe the long Valentino dress for the photocall, but I enjoy the drama of the premiere look (the black & white dress). And even though people hate it when I say this, Natalie looks pretty knocked up to me. She’s looked knocked up for a few months now. Most outlets are just using euphemisms, like “Portman hides her figure in Venice” or “Portman brings her curves to Venice.”
I was wondering if Portman’s appearance in Venice was even going to get that much coverage, because I didn’t think her offerings sounded that compelling. As it turns out, Jackie got rave reviews. Portman plays Jackie Kennedy immediately following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and some critics are saying that it’s one of Portman’s best performances ever and that she might even get an Oscar nomination for it. Which would be interesting because she was pregnant the last time she was nominated too. Natalie chatted with various trade papers about the role:
Playing Jackie at that moment in history: “There are so many things she’s dealing with at once. The loss of someone always leads to a questioning of faith. The spiritual part was incredible, and it was incredible to work with John Hurt on it. [Hurt plays Jackie’s priest.] She’s a young woman. She’s a symbol for all these people. She’s a mother. She’s a wife. She’s a betrayed wife. She’s a person who’s trying to figure out her way in the world.”
The danger: “It definitely felt like the most dangerous [role], because everyone knows what she looked like, and sounded like, and walked like, and had an idea of her, and I’ve never played a character like that before.”
Understanding the enigma: “That’s a big part of the conflict: When you know you’re a symbol for people, when you know that people see you as something from the outside, how can you maintain your humanity when for everyone else you’re this… mannequin for a lot of people? That’s what she was.”
[From THR & The Daily Beast]
I wasn’t a fan of the idea of Natalie playing Jacqueline Kennedy, I’ll admit it. I thought it was a really stupid casting choice. But apparently critics disagree. There are also some quotes floating around where Portman talks about Jackie’s voice and how she changed it depending on who she was speaking to, and that’s going to be one the key things to me – did Portman nail the voice work? Because I don’t think voice work is her strength.
Update: Yep, she’s pregnant!
Photos courtesy of WENN.
I love that black and white look. The other dresses, nope. Natalie Portman doesn’t seem too liked around these parts, but I’ve always loved her.
Me, too, Pants.
+1
I’ve never been a big fan, but even I must admit NP seems different this press tour. She doesn’t project as “heavy” and snooty, anymore — to me, at least. It’s refreshing. Almost like her time in France made her realize how she sometimes came across. If that’s true, brava to her for making a change like that. It’s not always easy to recognize one’s true faults — some people never do.
She still looks cranky to me. Pretty, but cranky.
I like her. I have found her bland at times, but I’ve never actively disliked her. I do think she often has a hard time establishing chemistry with her leading men, but that may also have to do with some of the skills of the men with whom she has been paired.
As for “showing her curves…..” she’s definitely pg. Portman doesn’t have curves to show otherwise.
I believe it’s been confirmed that she’s PG, but before I heard that I saw the pics of her in a white dress over on DListed, and OH YEAH she’s got a preggobelly.
Nice backhanded compliment…Curves are a shape, not a weight, and yes Natalie does have curves (its all about the WHR).
Yup, that B&W dress is lovely. I’d wear it!
Same!! I could stare at that face all day 🙂
Well the French would hate it, since the French are rude, snobby, and not-nice. /Sarcasm
I can’t stand her so I don’t care what she wears. She’s gorgeous but she’s an asshole.
No doubt pregnant.
Father rumored to be someone other than hubby.
I bet she’ll nail the Jackie role.
Rumor has it, it wasn’t the hubby last time either.
YUP!
Was gonna include that, but didn’t want to slam her too much!
Gotta watch out for those quiet types…
Tell us more. ..
you should look at pics of her kid and then pics of jessica alba’s youngest…i will buy into the rumour that both kids share a certain director dad.
@kay Jessica Alba’s youngest? I thought it was meant to be Rachel Weisz’s youngest. Allegedly.
Darren Aronofsky (the director of Black Swan) is rumored to be Aleph’s father. He and Rachel Weisz divorced not long after the child was born and I personally think there’s a resemblance between the two boys, but who knows…
http://cdn02.cdn.justjared.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/henry-aronofsky/henry-aronofsky-walking-03.jpg
http://www3.pictures.zimbio.com/fp/Natalie+Portman+Aleph+Portman+Millepied+Natalie+YOYV2bQN-RBl.jpg
Who knew celebitichy commentators could be so ignorant, lol. You do realise Cash is only 1/4 black and 3/4 white? and Jessica is around 80-90 percent white too? And they both have fair skinned, fair haired parents, so its not surprising they had a fair child.
Seriously?! Those two babies look nothing alike! The only resemblance being, they are both chubby toddlers….I think people are trying to have a round peg fit in a square hole here ,because they dislike Natalie
@caith Where did that come from? No one even implied that their youngest child couldn’t be Cash’s because he was fair. You are the only one mentioning percentages and fractions of “white” and “black”, and nowhere do we even mention that as proof the rumor couldn’t be about Jessica Alba. The earlier commenter may have gotten the actress mixed up or heard a different rumor.
The rumor was about Darren Aronofsky, who has directed many actresses and may have engaged in other affairs, perhaps with Alba as well. Who knows. I really don’t understand why you took it there, but be careful who you accuse of being an ignorant commentator.
Get your panties out of a bunch ‘la di da’, There a lot of ignorance here and i will rightly call it out…And my point still stands, those two kids look nothing alike, and we both know the insinuation was that they have the same coloring…anyway have a nice day XD
Aleph and Rachel Weisz’s kid look kind of alike though. Nonetheless, that could mean nothing. It could just be a coincidence that they look similar (Aleph does also look like Natalie’s dad). But resemblance-wise I can see a similarity between the two kids AND Darren Arronofsky (Aleph’s eyes look similar to his). But I also think it’s possible that simply could be a coincidence (a funny one at that).
Though he’s not conventionally good looking in the obvious way, I do think Arronofsky is more likely to appeal to a woman like Natalie than the ballet dancer (who doesn’t look like stud Sergei Polunin), so I wonder if that’s how the weird rumours started. Is it? How DID this rumour start years ago in the first place and who started it? ‘m more interested in the origin of the rumour than whether it’s true or (because I don’t think anybody is going to tell us the latter).
LA di da, good to see your reading comprehension skilled are functioning. Yes, thank you, was referring solely to the years of rumours about the director and his affairs…one claimed he fathered alba’s kid as well so I looked at pics and figured they looked enough alike that I would buy into the rumour.
Ignorance IS bliss, isn’t it? Particularly when it’s preceded by hypocrisy, but hey, let’s just be grateful for folk who are here to call it all out for us all (excepting themselves, of course) viva la irony!
Anant (sorry if that is wrong, can’t read commentors names clearly via phone): he was married to Rachel Weisz so that one is definitely his. The alba rumour led me to pics of all three kids which, in my unscientific celebrity hound ass way, look alike. All three.
I have residual love for her, and would be not-so-secretly glad that she stepped out on that twat.
Also, twould be excellent gossip.
Who? Great…another mystery to last several decades until she writes her tell-all.
Another scandal? Tell us what you know, Myrna!
I thought the story was that Natalie and her ballet dancer would soon be announcing their divorce? Guess not!
Divorce is imminent.
Father of 1st child is also that of this one she’s currently expecting.
And it’s not her husband – and, yes, it’s speculated that it’s Aronofsky.
Pretty much known out there…spin expected according to the latest gossip.
Pretty much known… like Kristen Stewart’s secret babies?
Nope
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J5f3IIhadQ
Nooo nooo nooo
That’s not a good accent. And I’m not American, and English isn’t my first languaje, I can’t even tell a Midwesterner from a Californian sometimes, but that clip is P A I N F U L
I’m embarrassed to play the bump guessing game, but….. yeah she’s either pregnant or is uncomfortable with other changes in her body. All those looks (except perhaps the short dress) are very different than her normal sleek and fitted style. In the second to the last picture, the waist in that dress has been purposefully let out. It looks awkward with how loosely it hangs.
Looove the black and white dress, it looks gorgeous!
Are her knees dirty in that second pic? Maybe the lighting is just weird.
2 outta 3. Love the black ans white! The bird dress is cute but that 2nd brown one…idk, I just don’t know.
So much frump, except for bird dress. I agree she looks Preggers.
All the dresses look a bit frumpy/dumpy..
I’m no authority on women’s fashion, but short women like Natalie don’t seem to look good in long, elaborate dresses like pics 1, 3, and 4…it reminds me of when someone commented earlier this summer that Elle Fanning looked like “the dress was wearing her” in pics from a Neon Demon premiere.
Quite honestly, after her last Oscar debacle, I doubt she will ever be so much as considered for nomination again.
What happened?
The producers claimed she did most of the dancing in Black Swan and mastered being on pointe (spelling?) in a year. The latter seemed impossible. A body double was used for the dancing. We saw Natalie’s arms doing something or other but the foot-work was most likely done by a body double. I think some people were even going so far as claiming that she could have been a ballet dancer if she hadn’t been an actress because she was apparently that gifted at ballet.
The academy was well aware of the body double thing, they are afterall mostly drawn from the production side. She won for her acting not the dancing. Honestly whatever itsy bitsy controversy remains lives only in tiny corners of the internet.
I think the controversy did become a bit of an embarrassment though. I remember the story being covered on Good Morning America. And Aronofsky even gave a statement about shots (something about what arm shots were used). I vaguely remember numbers being thrown around as to who was doing what (from what I could glean, Natalie was used for her arms, not her feet). The controversy did blow up a bit because of how the producers provided the promotion. They shouldn’t have claimed that she was a prodigy who missed her calling in ballet and could accomplish in a year what it takes ballet dancers several years to achieve. I suppose that’s more on the producers than Natalie, and I probably wouldn’t haven known how to change the immediate narrative if I was put in that position.
Not really, she spent months talking about how hard she trained to transform her body and ‘become’ a dancer…. and it was pretty well known by then that the Academy was made up of a lot of old farts who didn’t have the technological savvy to know about the digital face imposition used to put her face over the double’s.
And the film’s producers tried to gag the ballerina who played the double from speaking out about the fact that she’d even done work on the film to a minor specialist dance magazine, during Oscar season. If Portman was really winning for her acting, why did the Black Swan lot do that? Looks like someone didn’t want to compromise the ‘I became a ballet dancer!’ narrative that swept Portman all the way to her PR-fuelled Oscar.
It’s because the Oscars are such a race to ‘who went through the biggest transformation to BECOME a character’ – hence why they lied about her becoming a dancer.
It is so frustrating, because dancers go through so much crap trying to get recognition for their work; becoming a professional dancer is like becoming a professional athlete, it takes many many years of work, usually starting from a very young age. It is extremely time-consuming and requires immense commitment.
And once you come out as a professional, you have to deal with not being paid (“do it for your CV” etc) or being paid less than the time required to do something ($400 for a performance when you need 2 weeks of full-time prep for it), etc.
It’s an incredibly thankless job and things like this just go further to kick dancers down.
I don’t think you can be absolutely sure that she won only for her acting. After all, many things are considered by members of the Academy, and it’s difficult to generalize as to what each of them was thinking when they voted.
Plus, you have to campaign for the thing in order to stand a good chance of winning. There are rare exceptions of people who win without campaigning, but she definitely is someone who put on a campaign.
And this year she said that the Oscar is a false idol so it would be very awful if she campaign for it
Yes, there’s that too.
The black and white one is sort of pretty, but it overwhelms her. She’s too short for it. The other ones are just 1950s house dress ugly.
And she does look pregnant.
I scoffed last time it was suggested here that she was pregnant but there’s a lot of unnecessary floatiness there.
I don’t normally think she’s a great actress, but her reviews are love letters so I’m now very curious to see how she pulled this off.
She looks great in the black and white dress, but her expression screams bored.
Agreed with everyone else that she is likely pregnant.
I hear she’s getting good reviews for “Jackie.”
Her face looks kind of different.
I’m having a hard time believing she played Jackie well. Maybe the studio paid off critics to say that. Because of how famous Jackie was, I feel she is too hard for anyone to play. Jackie is like Princess Diana that way — any time I see those two women played by anyone, I end up making a funny face at the screen. I watched a bit of that Diana movie with Naomi Watts and was horrified — and Naomi Watts is someone most people consider a brilliant actress.
I did see one positive review in The Daily Beast, but it was written by a guy. Male critics love Natalie Portman beyond what’s normal. I’m not sure how seriously to take the review.
I think the critics like her because she seems so child-like: usually small-ish and short-ish and child-ish looking. Then she made the best of her Harvard degree showing off her intelligence (or her connections) for that matter.
What she hides is that she is the child of two perhaps nor rich but wealthy and socially capable parents and that teaches you how to hustle “correctly” = brilliantly self-confident socialising and effective networking.
I don’t like her that much either but she has made some very good movies and generally seems a no-crap person with decent attitude. Her latest mishap with her directing a movie is more some kind of mistake: too early for her to direct as she should have tried to get more experience in directing such big movies. And over-confidence. I am actually a bit sorry for her but I am sure she will get over that. I just hopes she makes more brilliant movies – as director or as actress.
I do my know if she is pregnant but I do not know why the suggestion would be controversial, now or previously. She very well could be. And I do not think bumb watch it bad, for me it is just fun because I like kids and speculating or stuff. If she just gained weight or has a strange style it does not matter, she looks great anyway. Just differnt from usual.
Pregnant or not, weight gain (?) suits her. I hope she doesn’t get a nom. I cannot stand another parade.
Yeah, I was thinking that weight gain isn’t necessarily a big or bad deal for her. She’s still pretty no matter what.
Her face isn’t moving, so Botox, and I think fillers too. I dislike her so intensely its hard not to be nice. I think she’s going to have a hard time aging, harder than most, because she has never experienced anything ever going wrong for her and to her, even “very pretty” is a foreign experience. I think if you are a nice enough person it could get you through, but aging is MEAN and knocks the hell out of you. Us riff raff can manage it even though it sucks sometimes, but miss perfect Natalie…..I see a few divorces and many nips and tucks in her future.
Aging isn’t for pussies, but it generally beats the alternative.
Honey,shes never had a problem with aging before, stop projecting your problems with age on Natalie
That’s because she’s still youngish.
I love the black dress. She has pregnancy face. Her nose and lips look bigger. IMO
So lainey was right after all, nathalie is really pregnant.
she looks gorgeous by the way
She’s definitely pregnant. Her nose is wider and her waist is clearly expanding. I’d venture to say she’s at least 4-5 months along.
Totally pregnant. First I thought she’s gained weight but now I think she’s just pregnant.
I agree with previous posters: she seems way more subdued these days but still holds her rep as an asshole.
Totes pregnant. She’s always been very petite but theres a glow and a smoother shape to her at the moment which is beautiful. I hope she did do Aronofsky again & runs off with him.
Ballet boy, BYE!
Well, my us weekly Instagram page just confirmed she’s pregnant. So I guess, there ya go. 😊 I do like the black and white dress, but she looks miserable in those pics- maybe she still feels crappy?
Yeah, it’s been confirmed. Now I’ll be waiting with baited breath to see what the baby looks like. Will baby no. 2 look like Aleph?
I’ll admit I don’t get how these paternity rumours don’t bother her. They’d certainly bother me!
Because she knows theres no truth to them?
True. Fair enough. On some level, it’s hard for me to believe the rumours because I can’t imagine anyone having the nerves of steel to live out the lie. Even when I see the resemblance between Aleph and Weisz’s kids, the mental compartmentalization needed to live out that kind of lie is hard for me to believe.
Nonetheless, people speculating about the paternity of my kid, especially if my husband is the true father of the kid, would be annoying at the very least to me personally. I’ll be honest — it would bug the heck out of me. Especially since this kind of rumour isn’t particularly common even in Hollywood of all places. This kind of rumour is more unusual than the regular cheating scandal. When I say that this rumour would bother me, however, I’m saying this from a place of my own mental flaw, not Natalie’s.
Ah, but you’re assuming that they are JUST LIKE US!
They are not…not even close.
Celebrities/movie stars are cut from a different cloth.
Contracts, negotiations, image…all much more important than character and moral compass…values that matter to us mere mortal beings.
She lives on another plane where it is all justified and rationalized.
And her husband is in it for something that matters to him, too.
She doesn’t lose sleep but relishes how she can orchestrate her life.
It’s power – an aphrodisiac.
Pretty effed up.
I think that if you have the mental compartamentalization to sign a petition stating that Roman Polanski should not be prosecuted for child rape on account of his BRILLIANT directing, then you are capable of anything.
She looks really good here and definitely pregnant. It really shows in her face.
I just had a newsflash on AOL saying she was pregnant. She’s a bottle of meh to me, so I’ll just say congrats and hope she has a healthy pregnancy.
The “thing” with J Safran Foer is forgotten already? His new novel just dropped and it’s littered with divorce, cheating, emotional affairs … I’ll bet you $20 baby #2 emerges with hipster glasses and a pretentious vocabulary.
Hasn’t he been dating Michelle Williams for over a year now, though? Definitely got the impression he was crushing on Portman, but not sure it was reciprocated. Who knows!
Or Darren Aronofsky’s.
DM has new pictures up of NP wearing a fitted dress, so I guess she’s ready to announce now. There’s no doubt about it, she’s pregnant.
Lily Rose Depp, in the same article, looks like she hasn’t eaten in a while. Has she always been so emaciated?
I think that Lily Rose Depp might actually be starving herself.
Else she would be the only 17-year-old whose biceps shows from one end to the other due to lack of fat under her skin:
http://i1.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article7291473.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/Lily-Rose-Depp.jpg
I don’t think you can achieve that look without dieting. Also notice that she seems to have zero fat on her upper calves whereas she seems to have very well-trained lower calves. Her trousers are loose around the upper calves but tight around the lower calves. That effect is usually seen on people who excersise extremely hard:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/lily-rose-depp-keeps-casual-7291441
And yes, she was healthier looking earlier, 1st pic:
http://arabia.style.com/gallery/lily-rose-depp/
The latest photos of Lily Rose are definitely quite worrying. She looks a lot healthier in that second pic you posted than she does now. I know that she has always been thin, but I was a bit shocked when I saw her in that DM article.
Well, Lily Rose Depp models for Chanel and that fashion label is (lately) famous for signing anorexic models. One of the last (in the model’s world) “chubby” ones was the early/young Claudia Schiffer.
I thought this girl was pretty at first, but now I’m not so sure when I saw her standing next to a pregnant Natalie.
Shes always been naturally skinny. PLEASE STOP body shaming a child! And how the hell can you tell if someone has a mental disorder? Are you telepathic.
Because when pics emerge of young women in Hollywood who have lost significant amounts of weight, it’s always because they’re naturally skinny? And it totally couldn’t be connected to her trying to model.
The black-white Valentino just isn’t a suitable cut to make into pregnancy clothing. The cute short dress with the birds is much better for hiding a pregnancy.
Btw. why does she hide it? Just curious.
I actually really love how the black and white dress looks! very pretty!