Natalie Portman Reveals No One Wanted to Hire Her After 'Star Wars'

Even though Natalie Portman has 46 acting credits to her name and an Academy Award for her work in Black Swan, she wasn’t always sure her career in Hollywood was going to work.

In a piece from New York Magazine to remember and celebrate late director Mike Nichols, Natalie opened up about the struggle she had finding work after starring in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.

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“Star Wars had come out around the time of Seagull, and everyone thought I was a horrible actress,” Natalie told the magazine. “I was in the biggest-grossing movie of the decade, and no director wanted to work with me. Mike wrote a letter to Anthony Minghella and said, ‘Put her in Cold Mountain, I vouch for her.’ And then Anthony passed me on to Tom Tykwer, who passed me on to the Wachowskis.”