Natalie Portman she still gets treated like kid on film sets even 30 years after her debut as child artiste

Los Angeles, May 29 (IANS) Hollywood actress Natalie Portman, who made her debut with ‘Leon: The Professional’, has an illustrious career of 30 years behind her.

But the actress shared that people still "treat her like a child”, reports ‘Female First UK’.

The 43-year-old actress, who rose to fame as a child in 1999's 'Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace', insisted that despite growing up in the spotlight and developing a "serious persona" to combat people's perceptions of her, she is still fighting against it.

As per ‘Female First UK’, during a conversation about Jenna Ortega, Natalie told ‘Harper's Bazaar’ magazine, “We’re both physically tiny, so people will often treat you like a child forever. I’m 43 now, and people kind of pat me on the head. I don’t look like a child, but I often feel like I’m treated like a kid”.

She further mentioned, “Child actors often cultivate a serious persona because otherwise they’ll get treated like kids forever. When you start working as a kid, you kind of always feel like a kid in the workplace. Having some of that seriousness helps remind people, ‘I’m a grown-up’. Natalie and Jenna have worked together in new comedy thriller 'The Gallerist', and the 'Fountain of Youth' actress noticed they have a similar process in between takes”.

She explained that they don’t sit in a chair, they just kind of squat in the corner. “Catherine Zeta-Jones, who was also a child actress, said she did it too, that it’s a way of grounding yourself. There’d be all these chairs, but we’d just squat and look at each other and be like, ‘Wow, this is weird’”, she added.

Meanwhile, Jenna opened up on how much it's helped her become friends with the likes of Natalie, Winona Ryder and Natasha Lyonne, who all understand the journey she's on.

She said, “It’s been so beneficial and so cozy. They’ve seen it all, and, honestly, during a much darker time in Hollywood. We’ve all got this jaded way about us that I don’t think we’d have if we hadn’t started so young and had so many brutal realisations and experiences. But they turned out all right”.

--IANS

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