Psychology and acting go hand in hand, says Natalie Portman, who majored in the former, makes her living at the latter and often finds the two overlapping.
“The thing I like most about this job,” says Portman, who stars in the comedy “Garden State” with writer/director Zach Braff, “is that it’s like practicing empathy, practicing looking at someone else’s life and saying, ‘What is your life like? How do you feel?’
“Which is kind of cool because it’s kind of the antithesis of what celebrity is. Celebrity is ‘Look at me. This is how I feel. This is my life. This is my confession.’ With acting, it’s all about, ‘What is your experience?’ “
The rumination comes from a Harvard University graduate who has been bringing introspection and empathy to characters since she began her film career at age 10, well before the second “Star Wars” trilogy catapulted her into a different stratosphere.
Her “Star Wars” character is Padme Amidala, inamorata of Anakin Skywalker, the future Darth Vader. Part three–the final episode–comes out in May 2005.
But the fact that Portman’s a thinker, an audience draw and a beauty isn’t the reason Braff tabbed her to play Sam, the quirky free-spirited love interest of “Garden State,” which opens in Chicago on Friday.
“There are a lot of beautiful girls in Hollywood, and there’s a handful that are really good actresses,” says Braff, who also stars in the film and is best known for his role as Dr. J.D. Dorian on the NBC comedy “Scrubs.” “Out of that group, there are a couple that have this thing that you can’t really describe. You can’t take your eyes off them on screen. They just have this charm that is one of a kind. I think there’s no one else like Natalie Portman.”
Sam’s sweet looniness was far enough from Portman’s own more reserved personality that the acting challenge was intriguing to her.
“I’m a pretty inhibited personality,” says Portman, who, even at 23, looks like she’s barely out of her teens. “Just being that off, that abnormal was something that took a lot of diving in, a lot of relinquishing of control. Which is really scary, but fun.”
Sam encounters Braff’s character, Large, in a medical waiting room after he experiences a rather uncomfortable encounter with a randy German shepherd. It’s Large’s movie, but he can never really shake Sam.
On screen, Portman’s characters tend to be anything but shy. In her film debut, Luc Besson’s “The Professional” (1994), Portman played a 12-year-old who is unofficially adopted by a hit man. As ultraprecocious Marty, she stole Ted Demme’s “Beautiful Girls” away from co-stars Mira Sorvino and Uma Thurman.
College, “Star Wars” and stage work limited her film appearances during the late 1990s and early 2000s, although she had a small but memorable role in Anthony Minghella’s “Cold Mountain.”
The inhibitions just keep dropping. In “Closer,” which opens in December, Portman is one of a quartet of lovers engaged in interlocking psycho-sexual games. Starring opposite Jude Law, Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, Portman plays a stripper.
“It’s a lot more sexual than roles I’ve played before,” Portman says. “It’s interesting. The play (by Patrick Marber) is about sex, but it doesn’t have any sex in it, and the movie’s the same. It really explores all those issues, which is all that any of us talk about anyway.
“Talking about movies or books is sort of just on the surface, and then when we really get down to it, we all end up talking about love and sex and relationships at the end of the day.”