Natalie Portman: “It is devastating to live in a country where your personhood is not given the same treatment as others”

Another such growth experience came from another unlikely source as Natalie isn’t just changing the game for female representation in the entertainment industry she is also campaigning for gender equality in sports, too. Natalie is the founder of the Los Angeles-based women’s Angel City football club, which with 100 investors, including Serena Williams and Billie Jean King, is the largest female-led ownership group in professional sports. But it goes further than that it gives players a cut from ticket sales and offers training to help players find careers after sport.

Becoming a multi-hyphenate has clearly empowered Natalie. “It makes you exercise different aspects of yourself because a lot of what you do as an actor is working to help create someone else’s vision, namely your director. I love that and obviously advocating for your character. [But] then when you are producing or directing or running a business, which I co-run with my fellow soccer team founders with Angel City, you’re in the position of creating a structure, dealing with things that come up and putting out fires and it’s a different level of responsibility. It’s been really interesting to find those parts of myself.”

Given all of her achievements, one thing that surprises me about Natalie is she is still conscious of, and working on taking up space even after playing a superhero. “To have this character become big, when she’s Mighty Thor, she’s six foot and jacked, and to understand what it might be like to go through the world like that, was really an amazing opportunity as a very petite person,” she says.

“And then to think, ‘what does it mean to take up as much space as possible? What does it feel like to walk into a room and see over everyone’s head and be able to kind of control and have people be intimidated by you?’ That is a very different way of walking through the world. Also, there’s no hiding. I can walk into a room, and no one pays attention, but when you’re that big, Chris Hemsworth walks into a room, and he can’t help, but everyone looks at him, he’s an imposing figure – of course, also very well known – but there’s a difference in the physicality when you are that size.”

Has the role encouraged her in a weird way to take up more space IRL? “I definitely think so. I certainly understand that also the way you carry yourself and the way you enter space with your personality you can take up more space. It definitely made me at least recognise the first step is recognising the influence this pressure to take up as little space as possible, which is a female message we get all the time, ‘be tiny, be tiny.’”

There is nothing tiny about Natalie’s achievements and power, and I wouldn’t rule out her returning to the Marvel franchise either and leading the avengers single-handedly. But who would be her co-avenger of choice? “I definitely want to work with Tessa again”, she replies instantly. “Valkyrie is my favourite and then I do love Brie Larson is a good friend of ours too. Tessa, Brie, and I work together a lot. In our private time, we’ve done a lot of activism stuff together.”

So the Destiny’s Child of Avengers, is on the horizon, then? “I think you might have just come up with something brilliant,” she laughs. “The first Marvel musical.” Watch this space.

Thor: Love and Thunder is in cinemas now.