Natalie Portman on Femininity, Fragrance, and Her Favorite Summer Reads

“This house,” Christian Dior once wrote of Château de La Colle Noire, “I would like it to be my real home. The one where, if God grants me a long life, I can retire.”

Well, quite.

If you’re ever fortunate enough to visit the couturier’s sprawling 19th-century Provençal estate, which he painstakingly restored in the 1950s, you’ll probably feel exactly the same. It is extraordinary. The château, with its hexagonal entrance hall (the pebble floor is famously laid in the shape of a compass rose), unfolds into a series of intimate yet quietly grand high-ceilinged rooms, filled with antiques, Provençal textiles and the sort of effortless elegance that actually requires a lot of effort to achieve.

Outside, roses, jasmine and lily of the valley bloom among the olive and citrus trees, while at the center of the estate sits a spectacular 45-meter reflecting pool that almost mirrors the château back onto itself. Aside from being one of the area’s most beautiful residences, La Colle Noire is also a place inextricably linked to Dior’s creative legacy—the region inspired Miss Dior, the house’s first fragrance, all the way back in 1947. And so it feels like an entirely fitting setting for my conversation with Natalie Portman, Oscar-winning actor and Dior ambassador of well over a decade, ahead of the unveiling of her latest Miss Dior campaign.

Heavily pregnant, Portman is wearing a blue and white Dior babydoll dress and proper heels (heels!), which appear to require no effort on her part whatsoever. (Perhaps this should come as no surprise, after all, this is the woman who won an Oscar for her turn as a prima ballerina in Black Swan.) Warm, thoughtful and engaging – but also interested in having a two-way dialogue – Portman is charming and disarming. She also has a relaxed confidence that makes sense for someone who has represented Dior for such a significant period of time. In an industry that increasingly treats ambassadors like fashion trends – enthusiastically embraced one season, quietly (or sometimes not so quietly) replaced the next – Portman is something of an outlier. Yet there isn’t the slightest hint of complacency.

“The kind of elegance and legacy of the House of Dior and the perfume Miss Dior existed so long before me, so I felt – and still feel – very lucky to be invited to join,” she says. Still, Portman is keen to stress that the relationship has long transcended the traditional ambassador-brand dynamic. “Getting to be part of it has been so meaningful because, like every relationship that is long – and positive,” she adds with a wry chuckle, “you get the beauty of the accumulation in years and experiences together. The women at the helm, Delphine Arnault and Véronique [Courtois, CEO of Parfums Christian Dior), have become important friends in my life. Every time we get together, it feels like family getting together. There’s this sense of real relationships and belonging. Which I think is really important – especially for women.”

It’s a sentiment that feels entirely in keeping with Portman. She has long been an outspoken advocate for women, and Miss Dior itself was inspired by Dior’s sister, Catherine, the French Resistance fighter. Created in the aftermath of the Second World War, it was conceived as a celebration of hope, and a way of bringing joy back into people’s lives. Nearly 80 years on, Portman believes that message is remarkably current.

“To me it (the fragrance) feels very much like the legacy of finding hope and beauty and creating hope and beauty in dark times. Looking back at World War II, it feels like the darkest moment. But we’re also facing some really dark things now. And who knows how it will be looked on in the future. So yeah, it feels so relevant now to be celebrating beauty and joy and the beautiful things that humans can create – and not just the destructive aspects of the world.”

While Portman acknowledges those parallels between then and now, there is one thing she believes has evolved significantly: the very notion of femininity, something that has always sat at the heart of Miss Dior. “It’s such an evolving concept and should have the broadest ability to be interpreted by those who identify with it. Obviously, there are so many kinds of stereotypical aspects that societal forces try to place on us. But I think the newer generation is showing us that you can have a completely individual relationship with what that word and concept means. And that’s really liberating.”

Liberation, in many ways, becomes the unofficial theme of our conversation. It is, I should add, a decidedly intellectual one, but never in an intimidating way. We flit effortlessly from the role scent plays in storytelling (Portman enthusiastically references the scratch-and-sniff cards that director John Waters created for his 1981 film Polyester), to Rebecca Solnit’s No Straight Road Takes You There. “It’s incredible. She’s such a great writer. Ultimately the book is about having hope. But not in a Pollyanna way.”

A voracious reader, Portman launched her own book club in 2021, and cites Lena Dunham’s memoir Famesick among her favourite recent reads. “I inhaled it,” she says, her eyes widening. “It was just so honest. And generous too. You know, when you have books like that where you talk about relationships and stuff, it can sometimes leave people looking… well, not great. But here everyone comes out looking so human. You just like everyone, and you are reminded that we are all flawed and messy…”

Not that you could ever imagine the impeccably poised Portman being messy. She seems to wear all of her many hats – actor, producer, mother, entrepreneur, ambassador, and on this particular day, stylish pregnant woman striding around in heels – with remarkable ease.

She laughs at the very suggestion. “I mean I feel like every woman I know… We all have a million hats… You’re always thinking about what you need to do over there while you’re doing this over here. Yes, it’s all people, but women in particular. There’s so many caretaking roles – even if you choose not to have children – for parents,  siblings, friends. As well as doing your work, your passion, your personal development… I mean I feel grateful that we get to be so many things. But yeah, often you can just feel crazy!” she says, dissolving into laughter. “Life,” she adds, “is a LOT!”

There is, of course, a fantasy attached to Miss Dior – one of romance, optimism and possibility – but it’s one that Portman embraces wholeheartedly. “I think it’s completely aspiration, but also connected to what we want to be as women, which I think is engaged in a passionate, wonder-filled way with life that is full, that is free, independent, beautiful and romantic. I do also think that there is this core of idealism too. And if you can preserve that, that passion, that wonder with the world, that curiosity, that idealism… that’s the true holy grail of what can keep making life exciting.”

Miss Dior Eau de Parfum, dior.com

This article was originally published on British Vogue.