The Hit List: Natalie Portman

    The first movie I saw Natalie Portman in was Luc Besson's "The Professional" in 1994. That's the one where Jean Reno plays a hit man and Portman plays this precocious kid who wants to learn how to kill people. It's a remarkable performance for a child actor, a 12-year-old going on 30, "Lolita" with a grudge and a cold-eyed approach to revenge. What's especially impressive is that unlike most kids on screen, Portman doesn't act cute. She just acts.
    She's made about 50 movies since then - period pieces ("Cold Mountain", "The Other Boleyn Girl"), science fiction (three "Star Wars" films), big-budget movies, low-budget movies, shorts, superhero adventures, heavy-duty dramas like "Black Swan", and a western ("Jane Got a Gun"). And she played "Jackie". For somebody with star status working mostly out of mainstream Hollywood, she's mixed it up quite a bit.
    Here's a diverse selection of titles from her growing body of work:

"Beautiful Girls" (1996/Ted Demme)
Portman and Timothy Hutton meet up over the backyard fence and realize they could be soulmates, except that he's 29 and she's 13.
"Everyone Says I Love You" (1996/Woody Allen)
Natalie's a small part of the ensemble in Woody Allen's fizzy song-and-dance movie.
"Where the Heart Is" (2000/Matt Williams)
The movie equivalent of a paperback romance, with Portman as a white-trash teenager who gives birth in a Wal-Mart store. Yecch.
"Closer" (2004/Mike Nichols)
Four of the world's most beautiful people play musical beds. Portman's a stripper who never strips, so what's the point?
"V For Vendetta" (2005/James McTeigue)
"Remember, remember, the fifth of November."
"Goya's Ghosts" (2006/Milos Forman)
Portman goes through hell as a young woman tortured by the Spanish Inquisition.
"Hotel Chevalier" (2007/Wes Anderson)
A 13-minute prequel to "The Darjeeling Limited", with Natalie and Jason Schwartzman as an estranged couple playing out the last act in a ruined relationship. It's a serious downer, but Natalie gets naked in it, so there's that.
"New York, I Love You" (2008/episode "Mira Nair")
In Nair's segment of this anthology movie, Portman's an Orthodox diamond merchant who shares a revealing moment with a colleague played by Irrfan Khan.
"Thor" (2011/Kenneth Branagh)
Natalie provides the love interest for Chris Hemsworth's hammering man.
"Jane Got a Gun" (2016/Gavin O'Connor)
Shades of "Straw Dogs", with Portman as a woman defending her ranch against a marauding gang of outlaws. 

   Marriage and motherhood do not appear to have slowed Portman down. (Her husband is "Black Swan" choreographer Benjamin Millepied.) She's tried her hand at writing, producing and directing, and she's got an Academy Award. And she's still in her 30s. Movie careers are notoriously hard to predict, especially for women, but Portman looks like somebody who could be around for the duration. Of course, I could be wrong about that, but in the same way you wouldn't want to underestimate that kid she plays in "The Professional", it'd be a mistake to bet against Natalie Portman.