When asked how she felt about the reporting on her love life, Natalie Portman told Vanity Fair, “It’s terrible, and I have no desire to contribute to it.” Right before she let the magazine know that she would not be talking about her marriage, she’d spoken about the difficulty of being a public figure who would prefer for her private life to remain that way. “As I started having kids and a family, I started realizing that maybe it was not helpful to be like, there’s two of me,” she added. “I have many interactions during my day as a public person. To exclude that from my experience is not real.”
Portman might have learned that it’s impossible to completely separate the spheres she lives in, but her refusal to talk about her marriage shows that she can exercise some control over what happens in them. While her aforementioned public interactions may not include any mentions of her marriage, there are other ways to steer that narrative without creating the expectation that she’ll talk about it in every interview. A day after the Vanity Fair piece was published, Portman and Benjamin Millepied stepped out in public together — but neither was wearing their wedding ring. They were photographed looking relaxed and happy as they strolled down a Los Angeles sidewalk with their children. The strategic message they were sending seemed to be consciously uncoupled and peacefully co-parenting.
