Playing America’s most iconically stylish First Lady seems to be a rite of passage for actresses of a certain brunette hue. Jaclyn Smith, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Roma Downey, Jill Hennessy, Jacqueline Bisset, Jeanne Tripplehorn, and Katie Holmes have all tried on the famous Kennedy pill-box hat or over-sized Onassis shades at some point in their careers. Now Natalie Portman is officially joining the ranks as she signs on to star in a splashy biopic, Jackie, from Chilean director Pablo Larraín.
The project has been a very long time in the making. In its original form, way back in 2010, the film was meant to be a couple’s project for director Darren Aronofsky and his then-fiancee Rachel Weisz. The film was derailed when the Aronofsky/Weisz relationship fell apart and both director and actress backed out.
Then, in 2012 and without a director, Fox Searchlight started courting Aronofsky’s Black Swan leading lady, Natalie Portman, to star. The studio was possibly hoping Portman would be enough to tempt Aronofsky back to the project.
Three years had passed and while they may not have successfully lured Aronofsky back into the fold, Fox Searchlight has landed another stylish director in Pablo Larraín. (Reportedly, Portman’s involvement was contingent on which director signed on.)
While Larraín may not have as high a profile in the U.S. as Aronofsky, fans of his 2012 film No—which won the Art Cinema Award at Cannes and was nominated for best foreign-language film at the Oscars—can see the thread connecting the two auteurs. In short, this won’t be a straightforward, paint-by-numbers biopic.
The Noah Oppenheim script was originally conceived as an HBO mini-series and covers the “four days between J.F.K.’s assassination and his burial, showing Jackie at both her most vulnerable and her most graceful.” You can see why Aronofsky, the king of grief, was originally attached to direct.
Other than her stint as Thor’s girlfriend, Portman has been largely absent from cinemas since winning her Oscar for Black Swan in 2011.
But we are about to enter a new era of Portman with Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups and Weightless, this fall’s Jane Got a Gun, the Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic On the Basis of Sex, and the rumored lead in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina follow-up all on the horizon. Brace yourself for the Portman-aissance.
source : Vanity Fair Magazine
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