Natalie Portman Discusses Brothers and the Secrecy Surrounding Thor
Posted 12.02.09 by BrentJS
Acclaimed director Jim Sheridan's (My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father) new movie opens this week. Brothers tells the story of a soldier who returns home from captivity in Afghanistan to discover that his wife turned to his brother for comfort while he was presumed dead. Tobey Maguire plays Sam Cahill, the solider who tries to reintegrate with his family while coping with the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Natalie Portman plays Sam's wife, Grace, a role that she told Parade she was eager to play.
It was such a fantastic opportunity because so many parts written for females my age are just, like, the cute, girlish love interest. To get to play a real woman who's really strong and a good mother was really a great opportunity.
To prepare for his role, Maguire met with soldiers who suffer from PTSD. To play Grace, Portman said that she spoke with military wives to help give her insight into the "strength" that it takes to be the wife of a soldier fighting overseas.
They have to be tough, too. I think that women are remarkably able to deal with bad times and just sort of take control when it needs to happen. They have a great survival mechanism. In the history of warfare, while the men were away, the women were taking care of everything at home. They show this incredible capacity to sort of rise to the occasion.
Portman is currently filming Black Swan, a supernatural thriller from director Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler). After Black Swan, Portman will jump right into the role of Jane Foster in director Kenneth Branagh's production of Thor, which is expected to begin filming in January. Portman told Parade that the Thor production is wrapped in very elaborate security measures to protect against people who want to "scam" information.
It's like you don't get a script anymore that doesn't have watermarks that would identify you if you ever tried to leak anything. The Thor script is hard to read because it's on some weird colored paper and they have your name in huge letters across every page. And any time you get a phone call from Marvel, it doesn't come up as a normal number, it's like a five digit code. I've never seen that before. I've had phone calls from people in the government and they don't have that. Marvel's like some like crazy underground world.
Next Showing: Brothers opens December 4