Natalie Portman Reveals the Very Unexpected Job She’d Undertake If Acting Hadn’t Worked Out for Her

Natalie Portman, as you know, is an actress, and a really, really good one at that—a Best Actress Oscar winner for her role in Black Swan, and the star of numerous critically acclaimed movies like Jackie, Closer, and May/December. But had this whole acting gig not worked out, Portman’s plan B is, admittedly, a little surprising.

“I think I’d be like Jane Goodall, living with animals in the wild,” Portman told Entertainment Tonight of the celebrated zoologist.  

In Portman’s latest project, Lady in the Lake—which premieres on Apple TV+ on Friday—she stars as Maddie, “a 1960s housewife who decided to leave all she’s ever known to work as a reporter and uncover the truth of an unsolved murder,” Entertainment Tonight reports.

“She’s so in a tunnel of her own needs that it’s like she’s blind to everything else around her,” Portman said of her character. “It was wild to inhabit her intensity.”

Portman stars alongside Moses Ingram, who plays Cleo Johnson, “a hardworking mother on a mission to advance the lives of Black people in Baltimore,” Entertainment Tonight writes, adding that the plotline of “the two women’s differing but interconnected lives is why Portman signed on for the project.”

According to Portman herself, “It had two such incredible female roles—both women looking for their freedom in this incredible world of the 1960s in Baltimore, beautifully realized by all of our daughters,” she said.

Ingram, for her part, called Portman “a legend,” and said of working alongside her that “I was overwhelmed in the beginning,” she said. “Every day I sit next to her I’m still overwhelmed that someone I’ve watched for so many years, I somehow landed in the TV next to her. It’s super surreal. I’m grateful for it.”

Being Jane Goodall would be no doubt interesting—but Portman is doing just fine with plan A.