Natalie Portman Quotes

I don't know if acting is what I want to do for the rest of my life, it's just what I've, you know, ended up doing when I was little, and I've kinda grown up with it.

I had danced when I was younger, until I was about 12, and I always idealized it, as most young girls do, as the most beautiful art. It's an expression without words.

Going to a party, for me, is as much a learning experience as, you know, sitting in a lecture.

It's horrible to be a sex object at any age, but at least when you're an adult you can make the decision if you want to degrade yourself.

I've dealt with a few method actors, and I don't know if should say this, but I think it's a bunch of nonsense. I think it's film acting and you just have to be on when the camera is rolling.

If you're an actress or a musician, everyone thinks you're hot.

I don't love studying. I hate studying. I like learning. Learning is beautiful.

The fact that audiences have come away moved, excited, entertained and stimulated by the film is extraordinarily flattering.

New York is more where art is bought than where art is made.

If I had known my own limitations, I never would have taken the risk, and the risk led to one my greatest artistic and personal experiences.

Part of my reason for being vegetarian was because it practices respect and love for life all through the day, so three times a day, you make a decision to eat things that have not been killed.

If we can find ways to love life and be joyful without being wasteful or destructive
that's what's important.

I'm very interested in people who seem very negative and nasty and to go inside their world and see why they get that way. It makes you a little more sympathetic to them, even though I really don't want to be around those people.

I think the opportunities are all over the place - around your corner or in more exotic locales. But everyone finding their own interest - sometimes it's hard to know what you're interested in, I think.

We live in a real world. Come back to it.

I am not someone who sacrifice all for the cinema, my life will be always more important.

My response was that more than half of Israelis are of Sephardic origin. Many of these Jews come from Arab lands and share the same physical skin color.

I've been really, lucky and sometimes you think, 'Why? How did this happen to me - what did I do to deserve this?' And you realize how much it's just luck. And then you see that there's a lot of people who are not as lucky as you are, and I want to like share that luck, you know?

The more money a woman has, the more educated she is, and the more educated she is, the more she knows about how to prevent pregnancy, and also has more reproductive control - she feels a greater ability to say no to a man when she doesn't have to depend on him for money.

People are just funny sometimes if you find the right character.

I think it's a great honor to win an Oscar but I think if you aim to be rewarded in your life you'll get nowhere. I think that the biggest reward is the work itself and what you get out of it and the connections you make with other people.

Accept your lack of knowledge and use it as your asset.

I'm tough on myself in terms of the standards I want to live up to, but that's also part of my pleasure: Knowing you are being your fullest self. Being your fullest self is a lot of work.

I was really excited to get to shave my head - it's something I'd wanted to do for a while and now I had a good excuse. It was nice to shed that level of vanity.

The best part about being friends with your parents is that no matter what you do, they have to keep loving you.

Awards are so unnecessary because I think we get so much out of our work just by doing it. The work is a reward in itself.

Social networking is playing a huge role in creating awareness and mobilizing support for all kinds of common interests. What better way to use this remarkable tool than to change the world?

There's so much else to do in the world. To just be interested in doing films would limit my life.

I really hate being self-conscious - and being conscious of being self-conscious

I'd rather be smart than a movie star.

We live in a violent world, but since the success of films like Pulp Fiction, it seems every movie has some violence in it, and it's now being used as a form of comedy: audiences are now being encouraged to laugh when people get their heads blown off. I just don't like hearing people laugh at violence.

Breast implants gross me out. I don't think they're attractive at all.

And then there is Cate Blanchett. She is different all the time.

I don't think I've ever been in love, I'm sure I will be some day. I've had enormous crushes, although I've never been into the Brad Pitt thing.

I love milk so much! I make a point of drinking a glass of milk every day. So now anyone who did those milk ads with the milk mustaches, they're my heroes.

I was, like, a total cliched '80s child. I had Barbies, obviously, as well as My Little Ponies and Cabbage Patch Kids, but I used to destroy them. I used to draw all over their faces and cut off their hair.

As someone who was born in Israel, you're put in a position of defending Israel because you know how much is at stake.

We have so much sex in our media that's disassociated from emotions. We have so much separation between feeling, and the emotional and the physical side of sex. They really do belong together.

'Star Wars' hasn't changed my life at all.

I have nice ears. I have no lobes, which was disappointing for a while, but I've gotten over it and learned to love them. Being lobeless isn't the end of the world

Cute is when a person's personality shines through their looks. Like in the way they walk, every time you see them you just want to run up and hug them.

I always ask myself, would I want someone to do something that wasn't comfortable for them just to please me? And the answer is no.

I'm not a perfectionist but I'm definitely, or well, I like discipline. I'm obedient. I'm not a perfectionist.

I usually run three or four times a week now. Pretty boring, but it's so worth is. It's done wonders for my mood

I'm really good at mini-golf. You know, maybe not big person golf, but little person golf.

I get freaked out by pills. Everyone I know is always like, "I'm just going to take a Valium or an Ambien on the plane." But I can't do any of that stuff - it scares me.

When I was growing up, my mom told me every story that was happening to her. Most of the stories that come to me are through a female voice in my head. My stories seem to naturally be about females.

I couldn't be anorexic because I like food too much, and I couldn't be bulimic because I hate throwing up too much

There's always pressure, from other people and yourself. If you're happy with the looks you're born with, then what are you going to do your whole life? We keep thinking up new things and finding better ways of doing things because we're not happy with what we're given.

I'm not convinced about marriage. Divorce is so easy, and that fact that gay people are not allowed to marry takes much of the meaning out of it. Committing yourself to one person is sacred.

Why are they making rules that say my lover can stay in the United States if they're foreign or share my health care benefits because I'm straight - but if you're gay, you can't have that?

One of the most exiting things about being pregnant is that I just am accepting the complete unknown; it's a complete mystery and miracle.

When a guy tells me I'm cute, it's not something desirable. Cute is more like what you want your pet to be.

I don't mean to criticize anyone in any way that I wouldn't criticize myself. I think people should have fun, and have a good time, and enjoy the luck that we have to be lazy and dwell in consumerism. But I think that it's a balance. And our job as actors is empathy.

I think the New York Public Library is so, so amazing. It's literally the coolest place - It's good shelter from the sun and it's the most beautiful building. It's really, really fun.

A movie about a weak, vulnerable woman can be feminist if it shows a real person that we can empathize with.

People who take everything to heart trivia - the most capable of genuinely love.

I tend to lean toward strong female stories. I want to make things that don't already exist out there.

I think school is so much harder than real life. People are so much more accepting when they are adults.

I'd like it if people thought I was Jewish looking.

If you're a person and care about other people - I don't think I have any sort of special understanding or anything, I think any feeling person would experience similar things if given the same opportunities to see the things I've been lucky enough to see and meet the people I've been lucky enough to meet.

Jasmine is just the most delicate and beautiful scent.

There are movies where we are interested in seeing people's lives without agreeing with what they're doing.

I am a very strict vegetarian ... I just really, really love animals, and I act on my values.

Cute is when your personality shines through your looks. Like, when you see someone's personality in the way they walk and you just feel like hugging them every time you see them.

It's a big honour to have people be excited about a movie that you make. That's the one thing that you want.

Where I live, nobody who's fourteen is having sex and doing major drugs. And I think if you see it in the movies, you may be influenced by it. I think it's so important to preserve your innocence.

When you get older, you realize it's a lot less about your place in the world but your place in you. It's not how everyone views you, but how you view yourself

I've always tried to stay away from playing Jews. I get like 20 Holocaust scripts a month, but I hate the genre.

Ballet really lends itself to that because there's such a sense of ritual, with wrapping the shoes every day and preparing new shoes for every performance. It's such a process. It's almost religious, in nature.

As I look back on it, I'm glad that I had this false image. I was who everyone else - my parents, my friends, society - wanted me to be. I was a pleaser, someone who wanted to make everyone happy, to not let anyone down. Now, I'm not like that.

I am more a teenager than anyone else I know. One minute I feel really adult and the next minute I say, 'Let's play hide-and-seek.'

Use Starbucks mints for every occasion - they're the strongest

I know a famous violinist who told me he can't compose because he knows too many pieces. So, when he starts thinking of a note, an existing piece immediately comes to mind. Just starting out, one of your biggest strengths is not knowing how things are supposed to be.

I learned to observe other people - that's sort of what it teaches you. To pay attention. Which can also be a really natural human skill.

I'm always on the phone because I'm usually not with the people I want to be with.

Our generation has the ability and the responsibility to make our ever-more connected world a more hopeful, stable and peaceful place.

The moment you buy into the idea that you're above anyone else, is the moment you need to be slapped in the face.

Grab the good people around you. Don't let them go.

I always think the most romantic books or films are the ones where the romance doesn't happen, because it makes your heart ache so much watching it.

I think all girls in the world wish they were a Parisian girl - that sort of effortless chic confidence and comfort in their own skin.

I also feel I'm a positive role model by not putting my education on hold.

I think that most women know what happens that leads you to a point where you're not even looking for intimacy anymore. You're just looking for the physical side of it and not the emotional side of it.

Really, really obscene hip-hop. I love it so much. It makes me laugh and then it makes me want to dance.

I don't want to sound superficial, but when I go see a movie myself, I'd rather look at Tom Cruise than some shmo with a beer belly

I speak fluent Hebrew and even dream in Hebrew when we visit there, once or twice a year.

The only place I am recognized all the time is in L.A. and otherwise, it's only about once a day. I feel pretty anonymous.

Point shoes are torture devices.

I mean the Internet is like the luckiest thing - we have everything at our fingertips right now.