Benjamin Millepied is just as testy and surly with journalists as his baby-mama Natalie Portman. I will always say that if a celebrity wants their privacy, there are ways to go about it. If a celebrity wants to not answer a certain line of questioning, there are ways to avoid those questions, or simply not answer them in a polite, professional way. Journalists have a job too – they get paid to ask questions. Most journalists understand “Oh, please, I don’t really want to discuss that. Next question, please.” That’s polite and professional. What’s not polite and professional is throwing a hissy fit when a journalist deigns to ask you about the whole reason why you’re famous: say, impregnating Natalie Portman. Such is the case with Benjamin.

Millepied was receiving some award a few days ago, and a reporter from the New York Times asked him a polite question about his baby-mama (“How‘s Natalie doing?” was the exact question). Instead of simply answering politely and vaguely, or even walking away, or just muttering something in French, Benjamin got butt-hurt and tried to have the NYT reporter bounced from the event. Ridiculous. The NYT piece is here, and here’s the behind-the-scenes story:

Benjamin Millepied hasn’t helped dispel the stereotype that the French are rude. The future Mr. Natalie Portman had some in the media yearning nostalgically for “freedom fries” on Thursday night when he demanded that a correspondent for The New York Times’ Nocturnalist column be kicked out of a New York University fete after she innocently inquired about the state of his pregnant fiancée.

Although The Times noted the international incident briefly in Saturday’s paper, a source familiar with what happened tells us the New York City Ballet dancer’s behavior was even more boorish than the newspaper reported.

The 33-year-old Millepied — whose status in the city has risen appreciably since he paired off with Portman — was at New York University’s Kimmel Center where he received a “Medal of Honor” from NYU’s La Maison Francaise.

There, a source says Millepied “grew increasingly testy” with a petite reporter from The Times as she asked him a handful of softball questions related to the evening, his background and career.

Our insider says the reporter, who was not Nocturnalist columnist Sarah Maslin Nir, playfuly asked Millepied if he had done anything “armylike” to receive his award. She was riffing on the fact that in the U.S., the Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration bestowed by the government to brave American soldiers, not French ballet dancers.

But Millepied either did not get this or chose not to be amused.

“You’re being funny?” we’re told the Francophile “snarled” at the reporter, in a performance worthy of a Darren Aronofsky film.

The worst was yet to come. As Nir wrote in The Times, shortly after her reporter politely asked, “How’s Natalie doing?” “Mr. Millepied stormed off, oozing exquisite hauteur. The kind, we suspect, that can emanate only from a ballet divo engaged to a megastar.”

Although our source says reporters had not been warned in advance to refrain from asking about Portman, Nir wrote that shortly after Millepied stalked away, “we were told by the organizers that our inquiring after Ms. Portman’s health was ‘inappropriate’ and that Mr. Millepied wanted us out.”

“Later still, we were told we could stay if we didn’t report,” Nir continues. “We left.” Bravo.

Perhaps Millepied’s tights were in a twist because he remembered a February Times article in which Dance magazine Editor Wendy Perron noted that the Millepied’s work as a choreographer “has been very spotty” and that he was “the next tier” from the top in terms of his work.

Neither Nir, nor a rep for Millepied could be reached for comment by deadline.

[From The New York Daily News]

Oh, for goodness sake. It kills me when celebrities act this way, and it’s especially stupid when it’s someone like Benjamin – you know, someone who is slightly famous in one particular area, to one specific group of people (the ballet world), who suddenly becomes a much bigger celebrity simply because of WHO HE IMPREGNATED. With that new-found fame, Benjamin got TONS of additional offers and work (including that twirling gig for YSL), so he just needs to suck it up and learn some professionalism instead of wandering around throwing fits like a butt-hurt baby. I should note something else too – this is not Benjamin’s first tangle with the paper of record. The NYT tried to profile him several months ago, and he was a total dick to them then too.

Meanwhile, in a recent interview, Natalie Portman compared herself to Audrey Hepburn and suggested that she (Natalie) was thinking about leaving Hollywood: “Audrey made some good choices in life… More and more I realize how unimportant it is to be in the history books or anything like that. Putting time and energy into your children – that’s valuable.” If you want to leave, leave. Don’t compare yourself to Audrey Hepburn as you’re going, though.

Photos courtesy of Fame.