Natalie Portman Discusses Being 'Sexualized' as a Child Star

Natalie Portman is opening up about feeling “unsafe” when she was “sexualized” as a child star.

The 37-year-old Vox Lux actress – who has revealed that her first piece of fan mail was a rape fantasy written by a man – shared her thoughts in a new interview with People.

PHOTOS: Check out the latest pics of Natalie Portman

“She is such a wild character, but she’s also someone I felt was a real person, who is the product of this life that has happened to her,” she shared about her Vox Lux character. “You see in this film how a young girl is packaged into this brand, and it’s kind of separate from her. I experienced a different degree of it, in a different way, and obviously I have very different support system than the character in the movie, but you see what the culture wants from you, or demands from you and wants to put out there.”

“I know I was sexualized in the ways that I was photographed or portrayed, and that was not my doing,” she continued. “That becomes a part of your public identity.”

“It’s complicated to have your own private development and maturation alongside that [pressure] as a person, kind of having these double identities,” she added. “And I think that it’s a big conversation about how many different kinds of things girls and women can be.”