Natalie Portman says being sexualised as a child actress made her "afraid" of her own sexuality.
Natalie Portman
The Hollywood star got her big break when she was only in her early teens and she admits that she "consciously cultivated" some kind of "super-serious" and "conservative" manner as she got older because of what she had experienced as a young child.
Speaking to Dax Shepard on his Armchair Expert podcast, she said: "Being sexualised as a child took away from my own sexuality because it made me afraid. So many people had this impression of me that I was super-serious and prude and conservative as I got older. I consciously cultivated that because it was a way to make me feel safe. If someone respects you, they’re not going to objectify you. At that age you do have your own sexuality, and you do have your own desire and you do want to explore things … but you don’t feel safe necessarily. You build these fortresses."
Meanwhile, Natalie previously confessed she feels like she is "constantly fighting against" being judged based on her looks as she opened up about the pressures women face to look a certain way and how "tenuous" it is that often a person's value is determined by their beauty.
The 'Black Swan' actress said: "As a woman, you are constantly fighting against only being valued for your looks, because it becomes a very tenuous thing, to be defined by the gaze of others, the opinion of others. And beauty is, by definition, ephemeral, it’s a thing that that you can’t trap in time, it’s a butterfly, it lives for a second. So to make a lifetime worthwhile and have meaning cannot rest on beauty."
Tagged in Dax Shepard Natalie Portman