Mind game: For Natalie Portman, psychology and acting are very similar

Black Swan actress Natalie Portman believes that acting and psychology are ‘very similar’. The actress took a break from her career to pursue a degree in psychology from Harvard University. She thinks it helped her work because doing both successfully involved being ‘observant’.

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Asked if her degree had been useful in her work, she said: “I think it’s very similar — in acting you’re trying to imagine why people do the things they do and what forms them. Psychology is very much the same practice. The first thing they teach is observing — it’s watching people, noticing patterns and behaviour.”

Meanwhile, in May December, Natalie plays Elizabeth, an actress preparing to play a real-life figure and she admitted essaying someone based on a real person can feel ‘vampiric’, even when she is trying to be empathetic. She said: “That’s a classic trope of literature and theatre. You read Chekhov, and he’s questioning whether storytelling is stealing from people’s lives. I think every artiste questions himself or herself.”

She added, “Am I stealing from real people to feed my art — like a vampire? It can be ‘vampiric’, but I think you can approach it in a way that’s more generous, more about empathy and trying to imagine someone’s life, as opposed to trying to steal someone’s life”. The 42-year-old actress made her movie debut in Leon when she was 12 and had her first Broadway role was four years later in The Diary of Anne Frank. She enjoys working on stage and screen in different ways.