Portman wants strong female leads

Actress Natalie Portman says she is “not interested” in watching movies without women in strong roles.

The Black Swan star is disappointed that there is less movies in Hollywood that feature women in leading roles. As an audience member, she finds it is “really hard” to watch any films which don’t feature many women. “I don’t have a problem with that point of view because it is a totally legitimate point of view— I’m glad to get insight into how straight white male minds work. It’s just that we’re not having other points of view,” Portman said.

“As a female audience member, it’s really hard for me to watch these movies where women don’t exist. There are so many movies where it’s literally 20 men and no female character, or there’s a female character who’s, like, the wife on the phone. I’m kind of not interested in watching it,” she added. However, the 35-year-old appreciates that “desire is the language of cinema” and because of the uneven ratio of men to women filmmakers, it causes an imbalance of the stories shared. “It’s hard because desire is the language of cinema. And because it’s been so male-dominated, the story of cinema is male desire and a female object of desire.

“I don’t necessarily have a problem with that, it’s just that we don’t have the counter, we don’t have the expression of female desire. We become the object of desire, not the subject of desire. Women have been made to feel guilty or bad for desiring food, or sex, or power,” Portman said. —IANS