Is Natalie Portman giving anyone else pregnant vibes in these photos? I think it may be the print on the dress, plus the way she’s standing in some of these photos. Natalie was the keynote speaker at Harvard’s Class Day ceremony yesterday. Harvard is her alma mater (she’s a 2003 graduate), and this is the first time she’s been invited back to speak at Class Day. In case you’re wondering, this is just a fancy way of saying Natalie was the commencement speaker for the graduating class of 2015. Update: Okay, so commencement is something different, but the Class Day speech is still about the graduating class. Here’s her speech.
She comes across pretty well here. It looks like a nice graduation ceremony, right? Mine was chaos. It was unseasonably hot and humid and of course my graduation took place outside in the sunniest field on campus. I walked the wrong way off the podium too and it was SO embarrassing. Ugh. Anyway, in case you don’t feel like watching the video, here are some highlighted quotes:
Worrying about being accepted at Harvard: “I went to a public high school on Long Island. The girls I went to school with had Prada bags and flat-ironed hair. People didn’t pay much attention to the fact that I was an actress. I was known for having a backpack bigger than I was, and always having whiteout on my hands… When I got to Harvard just after the release of Star Wars: Episode 1, I feared people would assume I had gotten in just for being famous, and not worthy of the intellectual rigor here…”
The challenges: “It’s easy to romanticize my time here, but I had some difficult times here. Being 19, dealing with my first heartbreak, taking birth control that’s now off the market due to its depressive side effects….”
She says she was “woefully unprepared” for Black Swan: “The point is, if I had known my own limitations, I never would have taken the risk. And the risk led to one of my greatest personal and professional achievements….Make use of the fact that you don’t doubt yourself too much right now because, as we get older, we get more realistic. Accept your lack of knowledge and use it as your asset.”
I know what she’s trying to say about being “woefully unprepared” for Black Swan, like she’s using it as an example of throwing yourself into a challenge without thinking about how you could fail in a big way, but all she did was remind me of how she took credit for other dancers’ work and built her Oscar campaign around the idea that she had become a prima ballerina-level dancer in less than a year. Woefully unprepared indeed.
Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.
Just a slight correction. Natalie was the Class Day speaker. Harvard does several days of events, Class Day being one of them. Commencement is today and the commencement speaker is Deval Patrick, former Governor of Massachusetts. Patrick is also a Harvard alum.
And I think Natalie did fine. Class Day is more casual than Commencement.
Ah, okay! Fixed it.
And I agree she does give off a slight pregnant vibe. But it could be all the eggplants.
now i want some eggplant parm
My sister knew her when they attended Harvard. She said Natalie was stuck up and frequently used “well my dad said” to rationalize her points.
Never met the babe and I believe every word you are saying about Natalie…
I’ve heard she was awful from someone who went to high school with her.
She took driver’s ed at my school and heard same things.
Heard the same from those who knew her from H days.
The details are too specific to be ignored.
Yep, I’ve been hearing that for years…add in those “eating meat is like rape” from the fool that signed that “Free Polanski” crap..yea, I don’t think she’s too bright or likeable.
The she did 85% of the dancing still riles me. I’ve no doubt she worked extremely hard and yes if you count the close ups where she’s doing lovely arm movements and expressions then yes it adds up but it wasn’t dancing, they did lead everyone to believe she had done this amazing thing of becoming a ballerina in a year and was doing turns on pointe. It was a huge part of her campaign.
yes it was!!!!!
Yet again Lindy, I love you!!!
I’m glad she had the guts to stick up for herself and tell the world that Natalie wasn’t prima ballerina in less that a year.
Yeah, the 85% thing was annoying, but there was barely any non close up dancing in that film!
I remember that whole stink. I think she did some pointe work and trained for a long time but she openly admitted you can’t learn fouette turns in a year.
I thought the ballerina was annoying. Studios are always making big claims about stars doing their own stunts but insurers would never let the really dangerous stuff happen, and you don’t hear about stunt people bitching about it!
Usually movies with stunt people in them, like the kind of movies Tom Cruise does, don’t get nominated for Oscars.
In this case, the ballerina was also integral to Natalie’s performance. Yeah, Natalie did the crying and face work, but none of those sequences would have had any context without the lower half of the body being filmed as well. The movie NEEDED someone’s lower half doing that stuff with the ballet toes in order for the storyline to make sense, and for us to care why Natalie’s eyes were going red during the pivotal scenes. The actual concept of ballet dancing provided the entire context for the film, including the title of the film. Was anyone really going to sit through Natalie making weird faces with her eyes and all that make-up on all by herself without any context whatsoever, unless someone could provide dancing for the lower half of her body? Therefore, I do think the stunt person was integral to her performance as an Oscar winner in the way it may not have been for a non-winner who never had a chance at an Oscar nomination.
I think because stunt people are acknowledged. She claimed they approached her and asked her to not give any more interviews (she did a harmless one in Glamour) discussing the dance work in the film until after awards season and that’s what annoyed her. Ive never heard of a studio asking stunt people to keep quiet and actors are usually pretty open about what stunts they did and did not do, mainly because insurance wont cover them.
There was more long shots of dancing, which I believe were also Sarah, along with the opening and pivotal Black Swan scene. Also any close ups of the feet were also her.
They digitally imposed Natalie’s face over the real dancer. We’re not dealing with Flashdance-level effects here. I hated the pile on that happened to that poor dancer. Ugh, circling the wagons so Natalie could win an Oscar for being stiff and making the cry face.
let’s not forget the part where Fox was pulling down clips of the special effects that were used to transfer her face onto the actual dancer’s during the tougher full-body dance scenes where her face was visible.
(creating the impression that NP did that dancing, since a lot of Academy voters are obsolete old farts who don’t know how special effects work and take a publicity campaign as gospel/vote for their friends)
Yeah, that’s a great point. In one of those “Oscar voter profiles”, a voter actually chose Guardians of the Galaxy for makeup because “the tree” was so well done. It made me realize how meaningless these awards truly are… I always assumed that members could only vote for subjects they knew well.
even in the close ups, she didnt have the carriage and posture of a dancer
i could tell she wasnt doing the dancing, but the fact that she didnt even bother to have the correct posture was lazy
Black Swan was a masterpiece of camp, but would have been better in the hands of John Waters. I actually thought Mila Kunis was better, FWIW.
OMG! John Waters directing Black Swan!
+++ spot-on about Mila
Yes! Mila was far, far better in Black Swan than Natalie was.
Ha! Black Swan: A John Waters Film. At least JW does camp on purpose.
You’re just saying that because Divine + poo.
Once again, Detective-Doctor-Mimif-Oz, you have caught on to me.
Yes to all of this. Did Mia get nominated or no?
I didn’t like Black Swan at all. To explain, my criteria for thinking a movie is good or not is if I would watch it again*. You couldn’t pay me to watch Black Swan again. The only noteworthy things from the movie are Natalie’s wonky face pulling/crying and Vince Cassell as the smarmy instructor….and Marcia Hayden was good as her stage mom. But it was so uninteresting.
*I won’t tell you how many times I’ve watched “Lawless” for The Hardy….I’m going to go hide from Orig. Kitten now.
I think the mom was Barbara Hershey.
It didn’t pull me in either. I’m no fan of the actors really, but when they produce good work I will admit it. The Professional? Great. Black Swan? Nothing impressive outside of the dancing.
And NP has a terrible cry face.
Black Swan was a film so drunk on its own “BALLET! Aren’t I arty?! And I even throw in campy bits to show how self-aware and totally not stuck-up I am!” arse, it’s a film designed for an Oscar campaign and nothing else.
Not later enjoyment, and certainly not any kind of cinematic value (can anyone picture being able to sit through it again after a few years, and please tell me at least one of you laughed at that cartoonish transformation to the ‘swan’, I can’t be alone!)
I think the hype behind Natalie’s performance was ridiculous and ott, but I don’t get the love for Mila either. She was just playing another reiteration of the “cool girl” archetype that is comfortably in her acting wheelhouse.
I guess I am on an island by myself in re: to Black Swan!
…I actually really liked the film. I think it was making a statement about how ballet pressures women to stay pre-pubescent physically, but breaks them mentally. The idea that you have to be both Madonna and whore, pre-pubescent body but emotionally mature, unhealthily skinny but incredibly strong.
They illustrated the impossibility of that dichotomy with a character who struggled all her life to stay physically immature, which lead her to be emotionally immature and dependent on her mom and uncomfortable with sex. She is then thrown into mental chaos because she is being asked to be the “black swan” aka a sexually mature woman.
I think it did show all of that–but it wasn’t a good movie. I don’t know how to describe it–it didn’t play with my emotions. Like “12 Years A Slave”…..I have never been so scared while watching a movie. So concerned for a character. Especially towards the end, Solomon/Chiwetel looked like he was physically deteriorating–it was so scary to me. With “Black Swan”, when she’s crying, hurting herself, etc….I’m like “eh, what’s next?”. I don’t feel like the movie had any heart, I guess is what I’m trying to say. I think it was technically well done, etc, but it just seemed MADE for the Oscars. Like they wanted to make a depressing movie specifically for the sole purpose of attracting awards. Which sure, that’s how a lot of great, dramatic films are made, but there has to be more. I didn’t see more. And I tried to watch “Noah”…good Lord. I think I’m gonna give up on Afronsky.
black swan doesnt hold a candle to suspiria, everything about it was cliched and overrated
Natalie annoys me for sure, but she is soooo naturally pretty. Her skin looks great here and no, I’m not getting preggo vibes at all.
She is VERY pretty, but she needs to brush her eyebrows upward.
She is pretty until she opens up her mouth.
@poppy – spot on. If I’d never seen some of the poo she spews, I’d think she was an angelic beauty with a good head on her shoulders who even went to college. Instead she just comes off as smug, self-important and tone-deaf, which makes her so off-putting sometimes that even her face ceases to look attractive to me.
She is very pretty and looks a decade younger than her age.
Natalie lost a little bit of her authenticity when she moved to LA. I thought that she’d always be a proud New Yorker.
Awkward. I thought she looks a good 5 years older than her age …
Marion Cotillard or Diane Krueger look way younger than her and are in their very late 30’s…so if we start to compare her to the like of Shailene Woodley, lily Collins, Jennifer Lawrence or Emma Watson (the actual 10 years younger actresses!)it gets way worse: she can almost play their mom!!!
She was youthful for a while but I think that she aged rapidly lately.
One constant: still incredibly annoying in a very bland way!
I liked J.K. Rowling’s speech better.
Wtf is with the Eggplants?! I’m more offended by this than the Penis Dress.
Yes. Interesting choice.
Her voice is really flat.
But she’s an actress. She should be able to deliver lines with emotion behind them.
I like the dress and the shoes but not together.
Well, it’s Harvard and who am I too criticize, but I hate graduation ceremonies, and with three degrees I’ve been to a few of ’em. The thought of having to attend festivities for days on end just makes me cringe. All I wanted after to college was to grab my ratty backpack, 3 pairs of undies, and head for some smelly European hostels. Even as a huge Star Wars nerd, I would’ve bailed on anyone but Carrie Fisher (who I realize didn’t go to Harvard, but neither did I).
I feel 20 minutes is too long to listen to Natalie Portman’s voice. It’s not very soothing…
People typically do bail on some of the festivities. Alan Greenspan was one of the big speakers my year. We all went to a party instead.
LAK?
Nope, LAR. 🙂
She kind of looks pregnant to me, dress aside.
I’m beginning to realize why Natalie Portman keeps on bringing up Black Swan—she is not self-aware enough to realize that it should be a humiliation for her. She really has been in Hollywood too long…all she sees is that she has an award, and that some little person told other little people about how she stole credit for the heavy lifting. It’s not that she doesn’t care–she really has just been a self-congratulatory pontificator for so long that it has made her oblivious.
Yeah, I was always under the impression that Aronofsky and others rather than she herself were telling the public she did the dancing. But the speech she gave at Harvard seems to give off the impression that she is claiming that she really did the dancing. I thought maybe I was just looking for something to criticize, but she talks about the technique and jumps the dancers advised her on rather than her acting (which she could have made the focal point). Weird.
She is so beautiful.
So not buying her sappy story. She went to a high school where everyone had a Prada handbag because she lived in a very posh neighborhood. Her Dad is a successful doctor, so, it’s not like she was bussed in from the projects just for her smarts (which is not to say that she isn’t smart, of course) and couldn’t afford a Prada.
Plus she is pretty and she was an actress, in any high school that would be a big deal, perhaps in a different way.
I’m not buying her attempt to sell herself as a nerd who was flying under the radar. I’m sure she was popular, I’m sure she had a Prada bag as well. It doesn’t take away from her being smart, there’s nothing wrong with being successful in the second generation, I just wish she’d quit pretending that she had to overcome some huge obstacles to go to Harvard.
This speech must have been hard for her to write. I don’t think she’s really ever faced any heavy-duty struggles that would inspire the regular person and leave them in awe. Even her slight depression seems to have been caused by birth control pills, not an actual imbalance in the brain…
I don’t begrudge her that she’s never faced any real struggles. I’m just pointing out that her speech was probably lacking in inspiring content because of it.
I did come away moved by J.K. Rowling’s speech given one year to Harvard which is somewhere on Youtube.
Exactly! On all accounts.
That year they had J.K. Rowling as a commencement speaker was the only time I’ve ever felt jealous of people who went to Harvard – the ones who got to see her, anyway. And the speech truly was inspiring.
I love her speech as well. Perfect balance of insightful and funny.
However, it was not the firs time I felt jealous of Harvard students, it’s an awesome school.
I remember ages ago she spoke about how she overcame “self harm”. There’s mostly a shortened version now, but her original comments were how she defeated it. Then it came out she almost broke her skin and then thought a sum of… that hurts. I’m not doing that again. She was mad at her mother on a movie set.
I get the speech should have some boasting, but she humblebrags in every sentence in every interview when it’s not needed.
She’s pretty, but there isn’t much else.
My cousin went to Harvard with her but studied engineering. They had a few common aquantances. My cousin who is as sweet as pie, goes with the flow, and hates drama, said that Natalie was not very nice at all. After I had to drag out details fromy my cousin who didn’t want to be mean and elaborate.. said she was an absolute total and complete snob… (but very pretty) lol
I was surprised she referenced The Professional as being a disaster when it first came out. It probably didn’t make money, but wasn’t that the movie where she was hailed as the next Audrey Hepburn.
it made money worldwide and was well received by critics
maybe it wasnt as successful in the us as other places, but i saw it in a theater
from wikipedia:
Léon: The Professional was a commercial success, grossing over $45 million worldwide[1][2] on a $16 million budget.[1]
One of my friends had David Bowie hand him his diploma. Soooo jealous!
Amazing!