At 26, Natalie Portman is quite a young actress to attempt the move into directing but I admire her ambition.
Variety say the actress plans to helm her first feature A Tale of Love and Darkness under her newly formed banner Handsomecharlie Films.
The movie will be based on the memoir of Amos Oz…
Oz’s story dives into 120 years of family history and paradox, the saga of a Jewish love-hate affair with Europe that sweeps from Vilna and Odessa, via Poland and Prague, to Israel. Those who stayed in Europe were murdered; those who escaped took the past with them. In search of the roots of his family tragedy, he uncovers the secrets.
Naomi Foner, the writer of Sidney Lumet’s 1988 movie Running on Empty is in talks to write the script. She is of course also the mother of Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Portman’s inspiration for the film is said to have come from recent movies like Syriana, Good Night and Good Luck and also An Inconvenient Truth… so she setup her own production banner to tackle similarly political and socially relevant films.
Portman has done much charity work alongside her acting career, (she is the ambassador of hope for Finca, an organisation providing funding for low income countries) and will likely helm more movies in the future dealing with world issues.
No word on whether she will star in the movie too but I have to say I’m fascinated by her career choice here. Can anyone else think of an actresses’ career was so successful at such a young age… that she decided to take up directing too?
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Natalie Potrman is no Orson Welles. And I always though Welles was 25 when he made Citizen Kane. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. Welles was a visionary WAY ahead of his time who redefined cinema and left the rest of the filmmakes in his massive shadow, all this while in his twenties. Portman is an unremarkable ingenue who’s only been in two movies of note, The Professional and Star Wars, and is now hoping to at long last be taken seriously. I gotta admit I don’t have much regard for Portman. And I haven’t seen any of this charity work either.
About the only thing that even remotely qualifies her to make this flick is that Natalie Portman is Jewish, but other than that I imagine the Wayans brothers would be as appropriate a choice to direct this movie.
Hard to see how good she is until she has directed a movie, but there are few woman in their 20’s having the ambition to do this. I have seen Away From Her which was directed by Sarah Polley and was impressed with her maturity behing the camera. Natalie Portman is an Oscar nominated actress who has work with many big name directors Nicholls,Forman, Mann etc so one would think she has picked up something from them. She also comes across as somebody who is wise behond her years from interviews, I admire her for taking the risk. She might be the new female version of George Clooney.
I never said Portman was Welles… I used that more as a sarcastic statement because quite frankly, I never thought I would get the chance to use their names in the same sentence again.
Welles was 25 when he began work, 26 when he finished on Kane.
I’m no fan of Portman as an actress however there’s no denying she has been successful at her proffession and she keeps getting the jobs.
How good behind the camera she is.. I have no idea. But it really takes guts for a 26 year old whose career is at the top of the Hollywood ladder for her age bracket, to take on a directing job like this.
I thought someone might bring up the Sarah Polley comparison, but it’s a little different there because she hasn’t been a lead actress in too many big movies and she hasn’t had the same stardom or success as Portman, which was the question I put at the end of my post.
I admire her ambition too. I hope it works out for her.
This is good news for two reasons. 1) There aren’t enough female filmmakers out there. 2) Even though I like Portman, her acting can be, ahem, patchy. She’s an intelligent and very aware individual and yeah, I admire her ambition.
Which is a good question and no I can’t think of anybody myself, plenty are producers but not directors. Even older names like Kidman, Streep etc keep to the acting. I am actually a fan of her acting I think she has a natural style, the probelm is she has not developed her skills beyond this.