Natalie Portman On Growing, Creative Joy And Her Enduring Connection To Miss Dior

Fragrance has a way of becoming part of the fabric of our lives. Certain scents become inseparable from people, places and periods of time, accompanying us as one chapter gives way to the next. For Natalie Portman, it’s the way scent and feeling intertwine that makes fragrance so fascinating.

“Scent is so interesting to me because it’s such an unexplored sense,” Portman shares. “When Covid happened and so many people lost their sense of smell, they said they couldn’t feel like they were at home anymore. I think it uncovered how much of our feelings travel through scent, even though most of the time we’re not even aware of it.”

It’s a connection Portman knows intimately, having spent years as the face of Dior’s Miss Dior fragrance, a scent steeped in the symbolism of flowers, femininity and renewal. Her own relationship with flowers has evolved, too. “When I was a kid, I wanted everything to be vanilla-smelling, and now I like floral scents,” she says. Fortunately, Miss Dior Eau de Parfum blends both together, teaming soft, creamy vanilla with the velvety, silky aroma of the Centifolia rose.

It’s this rose that is Portman’s current favourite, thanks in part to a trip to Grasse with the Dior team during rose-blooming season to visit the fields of the brand’s partner flower growers. “It was so extraordinary and so magical to have the wind blow and the smell of roses come to you,” she recalls. “It definitely made me excited about the rose.”

That experience makes the floral fantasy of her latest Miss Dior campaign feel particularly fitting, with Portman surrounded by flowers and strategically carrying an oversized bouquet.

“We shot in a Paris streets set, so it does feel like it represents my life now: being in the city and basking in its beauty,” she notes. “I’m actually quite pregnant in this one, so there is also this moment of explosion of love going on. It is very beautiful and exciting to celebrate, and that is also the reason why I’m carrying around a big bouquet in front of my belly the whole commercial!”

The parallels are almost too perfect: a fragrance synonymous with flowers, a life quite literally in bloom and a woman in the midst of evolution herself. “Not to be corny but being pregnant is such a miracle,” Portman says. “I never really thought about how people came to be and how crazy and alien and magical it is until I had kids myself. I am now so lucky to experience it for the third time, and each time has been so weird, interesting, wild and exciting. The sole idea that you have two hearts beating inside of you is crazy.”

Pregnancy has intensified her sensitivity to scent, too. “When you’re pregnant, it definitely functions as a warning signal, and good smells smell amazing,” she says. “Melon is in season, and it is the most beautiful thing I can imagine right now.”

Professionally, Portman is still drawn to the things that call for courage. “It’s so wild how your personal timing, where you are in your own growth and things you don’t have control over in the world, affect what kind of risks or boldness you are ready for.” Are there still things she’d like to take on creatively that scare her? “There are many!” she says. A return to directing is among them. “I would definitely like to direct again — I think that’s a boldness that I need to step into.”

Using her voice publicly requires a different kind of courage. “On another level, being vocally and politically active takes a lot of strength, courage and resilience because it is always challenging,” she says. It’s a quality Portman has long admired in other women, too. Catherine Dior, the sister of Christian Dior and inspiration for Miss Dior, is one such figure. “[I admire] all the attributes of Catherine Dior, the original muse for the perfume, who was an incredibly courageous and independent woman. I’m sure talking and thinking about her through the years has influenced me.”

Another is Lena Dunham, whose creative fearlessness Portman has long admired. The pair first met after Portman watched Dunham’s 2010 film, Tiny Furniture. “It was the first time I’d seen a movie written and directed by a woman who was also starring in it,” she recalls. “It was one woman putting herself out there, and there was so much criticism of this my whole growing up that I was profoundly moved by it.

“I remember reading reviews of Barbra Streisand directing herself in Yentl, accusing her of being an egomaniac because she lit herself in a certain way,” Portman continues. “And here was a young woman, younger than me, putting herself front and centre. It was so inspiring and I was blown away by her talent. We started talking then and said we would work together someday.”

That opportunity finally came with Dunham’s next film, Good Sex, which Portman stars in and produced with her company, MountainA. “20 years later, she called me with this idea, and we made this film last summer about a 40-year-old woman rediscovering her sex life, and being personally revived,” Portman says. “Lena is so warm and thoughtful and incredibly good at what she does. Making Good Sex was a unique experience because of her and she’s become an important friend.”

For Portman, producing the film also meant being able to support Dunham’s vision beyond her own performance. “For a director, an actress and a producer share a same goal, albeit in a different form: you’re doing everything you can to help them realise their vision. When I’m acting and producing for a director, if they ask me to do something in a different way in front of the camera, I will do it for them, and if they need me to get a different location or they are having a crisis and I can help them solve it, I will be there to do both. Whenever you’re working with a director, you’re part of their army, and you’re ready to fight for whatever they lead you toward.”

The film itself reflects what Portman finds herself craving these days: warmth, humour and a sense of escape. “It’s all I want to watch — something that makes me laugh and feel cosy, something escapist,” she says. “There is so much lightness and beauty in this film.”

Increasingly, what she wants to make mirrors what she wants to watch. “I think I used to be going much more for personal challenge and expressing something of myself through the character,” she reflects. “While that aspect still exists for me, lately, I’ve gone more for things that would be joyful for other people to watch too.”

That shift feels particularly purposeful right now. “It’s such a dark time in the world right now that it feels like one of the biggest services we can do, as people who are making entertainment, is to actually be entertaining.”

The joy Portman hopes to offer audiences is something she finds in the work itself, too. “I always feel joyful working,” she says. “Being on set as a kid was such a positive experience for me that it’s continued being a sort of playtime, especially when it’s with great people.”

And when she isn’t working, that creative impulse finds other outlets. “I write a lot for myself. And I’m not a good artist, but I love doing art on my own or with my daughter. We’ll do pottery or paint together. Creating a human, you have so much creative energy inside of you … It’s necessary to keep that going.”

Perhaps that’s the thread connecting all the ways Portman is evolving: one form of creativity seems only to open the door to another. A new life, a new film, a new challenge, a new era in her journey with Miss Dior — all signs that there is still plenty of room to grow.