\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason that people attack you is that they LAMINATE onto you,\u201d [the showrunner] repeated again and again. \u201cYou scare them, so THEY ARE LAMINATING.\u201d I wasn\u2019t sure what she meant\u2014projection? Transference? But all I could picture was an image of myself, cut out like a paper doll and flattened, encased on both sides in shiny plastic, hanging from a lanyard at a conference.<\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s an imperfect analogy. But just as Dunham inadvertently evokes strong, sometimes delusional emotions in both her peers and the public, so does Portman. (Incidentally, Portman is starring in Dunham\u2019s upcoming Netflix comedy<\/a>, Good Sex;<\/em> Dunham thanks Portman in Famesick<\/em>\u2019s acknowledgments.)<\/p>\n Many of the people experiencing those emotions are men. See, for instance, the Star Wars<\/em> fans who have idolized Portman since The Phantom Menace;<\/em> Zach Braff, who wrote the ultimate manic-pixie-dream-girl role in his millennial touchstone Garden State<\/em> with Portman in mind<\/a>; and Moby, the musician who claimed in his own memoir<\/a> that he and Portman dated when he was 33 years old and she was just 20. Portman remembered their relationship very differently: \u201cI was surprised to hear that he characterized the very short time that I knew him as dating because my recollection is a much older man being creepy with me when I just had graduated high school,\u201d she told Harper\u2019s Bazaar<\/em> UK<\/a> in 2019. \u201cHe said I was 20; I definitely wasn\u2019t. I was a teenager. I had just turned 18. There was no fact-checking from him or his publisher\u2014it almost feels deliberate. That he used this story to sell his book was very disturbing to me.\u201d<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s Jonathan Safran Foer<\/a>, whose 20-teens-era friendship<\/a> with the actor has long been the subject of rumor<\/a> and speculation<\/a>; a T<\/em> Magazine story reprinting their emails<\/a> only raised more questions. It even inspired a storyline in a 2023 Off-Broadway play called The Wanderers,<\/em> which is\u2014among other things\u2014about a nebbish Brooklyn novelist falling in love<\/a> with a glamorous actress who doesn\u2019t return his affection. Katie Holmes played the actress, wearing a short, brown, Portman-esque wig.<\/p>\n Just before the pandemic, Manhattan\u2019s MCC Theater staged a show called All the Natalie Portmans<\/a>,<\/em> about a gay Black teenage cinephile who envisions the actor as a kind of manic pixie imaginary friend. Though she wasn\u2019t involved with either play, Portman, too, has occasionally skewered her own image: The disconnect between her good-girl guise and the idea of her breaking bad fueled a viral SNL<\/em> digital short Portman made in 2006<\/a>, and a sequel<\/a> released in 2018. That filthy first song was apparently Portman\u2019s idea. (She wanted the world to know that she could rap<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Portman must be aware, then, that over 30-odd years of stardom, she\u2019s become a strange sort of lightning rod, the kind of actor who often gets thrust into other people\u2019s narratives even when she\u2019s not playing a part. Perhaps that\u2019s because she possesses several contrasting attributes, disparities that evidently drive people crazy: Portman is not only beautiful but also a Harvard grad. She\u2019s not only a sophisticate but also the star of Mr. Magorium\u2019s Wonder Emporium.<\/em> Culture writers have argued (not unconvincingly!) that she\u2019s at her best onscreen when she\u2019s playing a bad actor<\/a>. This spring, she revealed that she\u2019s pregnant with her third child<\/a>; the very notion was enough to set off a fresh round of chatter about middle-aged women having babies, sending otherwise rational novelists into tailspins<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n