Natalie Portman made a brief comment on the speculation surrounding her and her husband, Benjamin Millepied.
The pair met when he worked as a choreographer on the set of the 2010 movie Black Swan. They married a couple years later and share two children.
However, reports emerged last June claiming that Benjamin had had an affair — but that the two were planning to stay together. However, speculation that the two had separated emerged the following month, exacerbated by photos of them without their wedding rings.
In a new interview with Vanity Fair, Natalie was asked what it was like for people to be "writing about [her] marriage and personal life in a very public way."
Natalie responded, "It’s terrible, and I have no desire to contribute to it."
When the interviewer then added that they didn't "love asking about it," Natalie then replied, "I can imagine."
When asked more broadly about public interest in her personal life, Natalie explained, "I got very protective of it very early on. I chose a different name when I started, which was kind of an interesting way that I separated identities. I would get upset if someone at school called me Natalie Portman. I was like, if you know me, you know me as Natalie Hershlag at school."
"It was kind of an extreme bifurcation of identity that I’ve tried to integrate a little bit more as an adult," she continued. "[But] it’s not just two different versions, there are multitudes of ways other people see me, both public and private, and there are multitudes of ways I see myself. Somehow the intersection of all of those are part of me, and it’s important to have all of those within me and as me, as opposed to being like, that’s some external thing, this is the real thing."
Natalie's family life came into how she viewed her public self, adding, "As I started having kids and a family, I started realizing that maybe it was not helpful to be like, there’s two of me. I have many interactions during my day as a public person. To exclude that from my experience is not real."
