Paramount(NEW YORK) — Natalie Portman is not afraid to ask for advice. In fact, she tapped fellow Hollywood mom and Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett to figure out how to balance parenthood and career.
“Very early on, I asked [Blanchett] about being a parent,” Portman says in the August issue of Harper’s Bazaar. “I said ‘How do you do it? You’re a mom. You’re the best at what you do.’ She said, ‘You just do. Stressing about it doesn’t help.'”
Portman, the mother of 4-year-old Aleph Portman-Millepied with husband Benjamin Millepied, said women aren’t alone in trying to strike the right balance.
“Most men I know are dealing with the same issues,” she told the magazine. “They say they feel like if they work too hard they won’t have enough time with their families. Maybe those questions need to be asked of men, too. Maybe the men need better questions.”
Portman and Millepied are raising Aleph in Millepied’s native France.
“It’s magical,” she said about the differences between Paris and the United States. “But the cultures are different in ways you don’t even realize. And there’s stuff you don’t know you’ll miss until you’re away. Like indoor gyms where kids can just run around and jump. They don’t have those there. [In Paris] if you’re running around on the playground chasing your kid and playing a game, people think you’re nuts.”
Portman is used to cross-cultural living. Born in Jerusalem and raised in the States, she has dual American and Israeli citizenship but her heart is in Israel.
“If you say, ‘I’m from Sweden,’ everyone says, ‘Cool.’ Then when you say, ‘I’m from Israel!’ everyone wants to have a 10-hour political conversation. Everyone has a very strong, very passionate opinion about it,” she explained. “But I’m grateful for it. I had so many friends who asked, when we were younger, ‘Who am I? What’s my identity?’ I never questioned my identity.”
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