The ‘Black Swan’ star is confident and ready to bring her passion project, and directorial debut, to the big screen.
The esteemed and lovely Natalie Portman is taking a big leap. For her directorial debut, A Tale of Love and Darkness, she is not only adapting a screenplay from the 2007 Amos Oz autobiography of the same name, but she is in the driver’s seat and starring in the show. The story follows the life of young Israeli and his time in Jerusalem and Israel. It’s a lot of pressure, but The Knockturnal was at the red carpet at the New York City premiere and got to see firsthand just how confident she came off.
Portman’s favorite part of the directorial process was in fact some directors’ biggest point of stress — having to make choices. “It was really wonderful to sort of be forced to make my opinion known all day long,” Portman said. “You have to make a thousand decisions a day as a director.”
“I found when I started I wasn’t always good at saying what I wanted,” she elaborated on the subject of giving her opinion as the definitive one on this project. “They would be like ‘what color do you want?’ and I would say ‘I don’t know, I’m not sure, what do you want?’ I knew what I wanted. I just wasn’t comfortable enough saying it. By the end of course, I was like ‘I want that, that, and that.’ If you say things in a kind and respectful way, everyone on your teams wants that. They want clear guidance of what they should be doing.”
“I had always known I wanted to direct, but it had to be something incredibly personal and passionate to me,” Portman told the Knockturnal. “When I read the book and I could visualize the film immediately and I knew that’s what I wanted to do.”
The film hits theaters this Friday.
-Photo by: Marion Curtis/StarPix
