Natalie Portman regrets supporting Roman Polanski and has very little sympathy for Woody Allen in light of the Time’s Up and #MeToo movements.
“I very much regret it,” Portman, 36, told BuzzFeed about her decision to sign a 2009 petition demanding Polanski be freed from Swiss custody for the rape of then-13-year-old Samantha Geimer in 1977.
“I take responsibility for not thinking about it enough,” the “Annihilation” star said. “Someone I respected gave it to me, and said, ‘I signed this. Will you too?’ And I was like, ‘Sure.’ It was a mistake. The thing I feel like I gained from it is empathy towards people who have made mistakes. We lived in a different world, and that doesn’t excuse anything. But you can have your eyes opened and completely change the way you want to live. My eyes were not open.”
Portman also expounded on her support of Dylan Farrow, who accused her adoptive father, Allen, of sexually assaulting her when she was a child.
“I think there’s a direct connection between believing women about their own experience and allowing women to be experts of their own experience and every woman’s voice being heard,” Portman said. “Whether it’s someone talking about their work and not being listened to, or someone talking about their own experience of assault and being told that they don’t know what they’re talking about, I think there’s a direct connection between that. Of course, do I know anyone’s experience? No. But would I question a man who said ‘Someone stabbed me’? Never … We know that women are systematically not listened to. That victims of sexual assault are systematically not listened to.”
When asked if she believed that it’s time’s up for Allen’s directing career, however, Portman, who starred in Allen’s 1996 film “Everyone Says I Love You,” pivoted to the bigger picture.
“I don’t think that’s what the conversation should be about,” she said, adding, “Let’s not talk about what man’s career is over. Let’s talk about the vast art trove we’ve lost by not giving women, people of color, people with disabilities, and the LGBTQ+ community opportunities — let’s talk about that loss for all of us in art. Let’s talk about that huge hole in our culture. I don’t want talk about ‘Isn’t it sad that this person who’s made 500 movies can’t make movies anymore?’ That’s not for me to decide. And it’s also not what I’m upset about.”
Portman also reflected on her work in the 1996 drama “Beautiful Girls,” which was produced by Miramax — then helmed by now-disgraced mogul Harvey Weinstein — and co-starring several of Weinstein’s alleged assault and harassment victims, including Uma Thurman, Lauren Holly and Mira Sorvino.
In the movie, Portman, then 14, played a 13-year-old girl with whom Timothy Hutton’s character fell in love.
“In retrospect, it’s weird because so many of the stories around the Weinstein case involve people from ‘Beautiful Girls,'” the Oscar winner said. “I didn’t know that all the adult women I was working with who I was admiring so much and felt so cool to get to be in a movie with them were being harassed at the same time. I was, like, the cute little kid on set everyone was treating totally respectfully and kindly … what we thought was charming then [in movies] is now very troubling.”