Natalie Portman is standing up for women as she attends the Cannes Film Festival. On Sunday, at a press conference for her new movie, May December, the actress spoke of the film’s portrayal of performative femininity. “The whole film is so much about performance and the different roles we play in different environments, for different people, for ourselves, even,” she said.
In May December, Natalie Portman plays an actor researching a woman (played by Julianne Moore) for an upcoming movie project. Portman expressed that as people, we take on and are expected to play multiple roles, not only onscreen, but also in so many areas of our real lives. “This aspect of, even here – the different ways we as women are expected to behave at this festival even compared to men,” she added. “How we’re supposed to look, how we’re supposed to carry ourselves.”
“The expectations are different on you all the time and it affects how you behave, whether you’re buying into it, whether you’re rejecting it or whether you’re doing something in between,” the actress continued. “You’re definitely defined by the social structures upon you.”
Portman didn’t detail the double standards she was discussing much, but she has previously.
In 2019, while promoting her science-fiction drama Lucy in the Sky (based on the true story of a female astronaut who has issues transitioning back to normal life on Earth after her mission), Natalie Portman shared her opinion that women and men are not often celebrated for the same qualities.
“The same behavior can be categorized completely differently between men and women, and that’s sort of what happens in them movie,” Portman said in an interview for the BUILD Series. “The first men who went to space, they agreed to strap themselves to a bomb… They’re all so brilliant, scientists and pilots and engineers, but they also were daredevils. Then when [Portman’s character] does something that’s kind of daredevil… she’s reprimanded for it as being reckless. So you see that… the same qualities that might be celebrated in one might be put down in another gender.”
Photo: Gisela Schober/Getty Images
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