Los Angeles — Hollywood star Natalie Portman, who began her career as a child actor in Léon: The Professional, has spent 30 years in the industry. Yet, she says she’s still often treated like a child on set, according to Female First UK.
Now 43, Portman rose to international fame with her role in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace in 1999. Despite building a successful career and adopting a more serious public image to change how people perceive her, she admits she still faces the same challenges.
Speaking to Harper’s Bazaar in a conversation about fellow actress Jenna Ortega, Portman said, “We’re both physically tiny, so people will often treat you like a child forever. I’m 43 now, and people kind of pat me on the head. I don’t look like a child, but I often feel like I’m treated like one.”
She added, “Child actors often develop a serious demeanor just to be taken seriously. When you start working as a kid, you always carry that feeling of being a child at work. Acting serious helps signal, ‘I’m an adult now.’”
Portman and Ortega recently worked together on the new comedy-thriller The Gallerist. Portman noted that they even share similar habits on set. “We don’t sit in chairs—we just squat in a corner. Catherine Zeta-Jones, who also started as a child actress, said she did the same. It’s a way to feel grounded. There’d be plenty of chairs, but we’d just squat and look at each other and say, ‘This is so weird.’”
Jenna Ortega also shared how much she values connecting with experienced actresses like Natalie Portman, Winona Ryder, and Natasha Lyonne. “It’s been so comforting. They’ve seen everything—especially during tougher times in Hollywood. We all carry this slightly jaded perspective that only comes from starting young and going through some hard truths. But they turned out all right,” she said.
With inputs from IANS