Scarlett Johansson Helped Natalie Portman Learn to Speak Up for Herself

Natalie Portman has joined the ranks of actors turned directors, with her first feature film now in theaters. To make A Tale of Love and Darkness, Portman had to learn to move past her reluctance to speak up for fear of appearing “difficult,” something she talked about recently with RedEye Chicago. One person who was instrumental in helping her overcome this reticence was her Other Boleyn Girl co-star, Scarlett Johansson.

It all started when Portman was cold on set one day. Johansson noticed and asked why she wasn’t saying something. “I was like, ‘I don’t know, I didn’t want to be a problem,’” Portman said, “and she was like, ‘Say you’re cold!’ And it was good to have someone point it out to me that I even had a hard time making a very reasonable complaint about my own discomfort.”

The Oscar winner said that while there are certainly men who might have felt the way she did in that situation, being a woman definitely contributed to the fact that she was nervous of saying anything. She says she thinks the gender inequality in Hollywood contributed. It’s the kind of inequality she notices every time she’s asked to talk about being a parent. “I will always get the question about what it is to be a mother and what that means to me, and I do not think that men experience that to the same degree at all,” she noted. Portman offered a possible solution: Ask men more about what it means to them to be a father (without necessarily asking women less about their experience of being a mother!).

Before you think Portman is down on Hollywood, you should know she does seem optimistic about the future. She told RedEye, “Girls of today are growing up in a different environment. They have Lena Dunham on TV, writing, directing, producing, starring. So many wonderful other role models, too, that it’s part of their environment, but it’s still not 100 percent there.”

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