*Actress/activist Natalie Portman, who campaigned for Barack Obama in both his campaigns, takes on the woman before her time, Jackie Kennedy in “Jackie.” Portman, along with Peter Sarsgaard were at the Peninsula Hotel in New York. I asked Natalie what was it about Jackie that made her want to take on the 20th century First Lady?
“I think it was the challenge of doing something I didn’t think I could do,” she said. “I really was like, ‘This is not my talent, my strength to learn a voice with an accent and move like [this] person.’ I’ve never been a mimic; it’s not my skill. So it was incredible to get to try it.
“It was also an amazing challenge to get to take on her because she was so unknowingly ahead of her time. Now journalists writing on Twitter or Instagram, Facebook or whatever know how they want to be perceived, but she was doing that 50 years ago and completely controlling what story was going to be told.”
Asked what he found interesting about playing Bobby Kennedy, the man Mildred Loving wrote to in “Loving” for help after being released from jail on the grounds she and her husband would leave Virginia because they disobeyed that state’s Miscegenation law, he told me, “That is a hard question to answer,” but he answered it with great facility.
“I mean what I strive on as an actor was hard to come by in this movie, which is connecting with other people,” he explained. “I don’t spend a lot of my everyday life connecting with people and it’s nice that it’s part of my job to not pretend to connect with another person but actually do that.”
On preparing to play Bobby, Sarsgaard said, “I started out by listening to those speeches that I’ve always loved. One of them is the one that he gave after Martin Luther King was assassinated, which is an extemporaneous speech.”
“Jackie” opens December 2, and also stars Billy Crudup, Greta Gerwig, John Hurt, with appearances by Neal McNeil, Stephanie Cookie Carson, and Maya Nalli.
Syndicated Entertainment journalist Marie Moore reports on film and TV from her New York City base. Contact her at [email protected]
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