Natalie Portman has a new interview with The Telegraph – you can read the full thing here. I’m pleasantly surprised to see that she’s mixing it up with some new quotes instead of just endlessly rehashing the same “feminism is not about kung fu” stuff that she’s been saying in all of her other interviews for her Thor promotion. I found the quotes about her Jewish identity fascinating, and I rolled my eyes SO HARD when I came to the quote about her Oscar win. Wait for it.

Love scenes with Chris Hemsworth: “We would catch each other’s eye in the wrong way; we couldn’t stop laughing and the crew would say, ‘OK enough.’”

Playing a scientist: “Unfortunately, there are still not that many girls going into science, engineering and technology. Jane’s got a mission. She’s looking for something for herself, gravitational anomalies, scientific exploration…. I watched a bunch of physics documentaries, like Physics For Dummies.”

Director Alan Taylor (Game of Thrones): “He is an incredibly bright man. He’d be like, ‘No, that’s a Kantian point of view, not a Hegelian one,’ and you’d be like, ‘Wow!’”

Being an only child: “My parents were wonderful. They were completely present, completely loving, they allowed me to do what I was passionate about and I understand now how much they protected me. I was lucky to act and have a regular household, lifestyle and friends.” They weren’t strict, “but maintained a calm and normal life for me that was far away from movie land”. Portman is an only child, which, she says, “definitely allowed me to do movies, because my mum would come with me on the set and my dad would visit on weekends. It would have been much harder if there had been another kid.”

Winning an Oscar: “It was obviously a huge honour, but at the end of the day, how can you say that one piece of art is better than another? It’s not like a race.”

Being vegan: “I really love food,” she says. “I’m as much of a foodie as a vegan can be. I like the blog Coconut & Quinoa that my friend [the chef] Amy Chaplin does. The granola and chia pudding and tofu bakes are favourites.”

She’s adapted Amos Oz’s A Tale of Love and Darkness and she will direct it: “It is his coming-of-age story set during the creation of the state of Israel.” She is renting a house in Tel Aviv with her family, doing research and pre-production on the project…The prospect of moving behind the camera, she says, is “exciting and scary. I think it’s kind of good not to be aware of how ill-equipped you are for the job you have ahead of you,” she says with a laugh, “or else you wouldn’t try anything. You have to be a bit delusional to try anything creative really, to not understand how high the mountain is before you start climbing it.”

Working in Israel… “It’s absolutely fascinating. It is the kind of country where you put your finger on a windowsill and you get an interesting story. It’s interesting to be from a place and feel part of a place, but also a stranger in it. I’m definitely a foreigner here. People here would not think of me as an Israeli. The culture I grew up in, the way I look at the world, is American.”

Her sense of Jewish identity: “The older I get, the more I realize how different it is to be a Jew in a Jewish place as opposed to a Jew in a non-Jewish place. It’s definitely a different feeling in terms of how freely you can be yourself and celebrate your culture and religion. It’s very different being in Israel than in cities that don’t have big Jewish populations, where it can sometimes feel dangerous to be Jewish, and you understand why there is a need for a place where you don’t feel that way. I feel it in lots of places. Pretty much everywhere. New York and LA [where she currently lives] are the exceptions. On holidays in New York the city shuts down. My non-Jewish friends know how to wish you Shanah Tova, Happy New Year in Hebrew. In other places in the world it ranges from people who aren’t familiar with Judaism to people who are hostile towards it.”

Peace in the Middle East: “Individual friendships happen daily already and have for centuries between people of all backgrounds. The truth is I don’t really understand enough. I’m not a politician. Of course I hope for only the best. I wish that one day it will be quiet for everyone in the region, for men, women, different religions, different ethnicities. Politically, it’s complicated, much more complicated than anyone outside even knows.”

[From The Telegraph]

“It was obviously a huge honour, but at the end of the day, how can you say that one piece of art is better than another? It’s not like a race.” Yeah, she can say that now because she won. I see you, Natalie. I remember your Oscar campaign. I remember your sickeningly sweet soon-to-be-mother shtick. You played it well and you won the Oscar. Don’t pretend like you didn’t wade in there and campaign like everybody else, chica.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.