How Natalie Portman Got Into Character as Jackie Kennedy
Natalie Portman as Jacqueline Kennedy in ‘Jackie’
Jacqueline Kennedy is remembered for her elegance and composure, even in the face of tragedy — so getting inside the former First Lady’s head was no easy feat for Natalie Portman. The actress is getting rave reviews out of the Venice and Toronto International Film Festivals for Jackie, in which she plays John F. Kennedy’s widow in the days immediately following his assassination. To prepare for the role, Portman immersed herself in research.
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“She’s so well-known in terms of what she looks like and what she sounds like and how she moves, so to get that is definitely daunting,” Portman told EW at TIFF. Videos and audio recordings helped the actress capture Jackie’s distinctive breathy voice and elegant posture, but that was just the beginning. One of the keys to understanding who Jackie was, Portman told Vanity Fair in another interview, was her discovery that Kennedy was an enormous history buff.
“She was a real scholar of history — just curious about history, and obsessively read history — and understood how important it is who writes the history,” Portman explained. “And she knew it was up to her to define her husband’s legacy [after the assassination] because he could no longer do that. And it had to be done quickly because there were dozens of other people ready to jump in and publish the first book about him, and she needed to be there to control it — and she did, brilliantly.”
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In playing Kennedy, Portman told Vanity Fair, she developed enormous respect for “the inner strength it took to be that composed to the world, as a sort of gift to the world, because she understood how symbolic her reactions to all of these events would be while she was obviously crumbling inside.”
Jackie, directed by Pablo Larrain, had its world premiere in Venice on Sept. 7 and its North American premiere in Toronto on Sept. 11. A U.S. distribution deal has yet to be announced.
Natalie Portman’s feature-film directorial debut, ‘A Tale of Love and Darkness’: Watch the trailer:
