Interview

GYLLENHAAL: No, but, you see, I have some questions that I think might lead us to talking about some important issues and get at who you are as both an actress and as a person.

PORTMAN: Oh, okay.

GYLLENHAAL: So let’s begin. Mount Rushmore honors four U.S. presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. If you could add any person to Mount Rushmore, who would it be and why?

PORTMAN: This is an amazing question. Gosh . . . I have to think about that one. [laughs] Let me stew on it for a little while . . . I’m trying to think of someone who has amazing enough features, but it also needs to be the face of a person who is a meaningful human being. Obviously, when you think of Mount Rushmore, you think of Lincoln.

GYLLENHAAL: Lincoln’s face was just extraordinary. I think that part of the reason we make that association is because he was one of first presidents to be photographed. His face was just so impressive. As he went through the Civil War, it just got more and more worn—he wore his stress and his obligations on his face. But to think of someone whose face can be shown next to Lincoln, Washington, Roosevelt, and Jefferson . . . That’s hard. I don’t know why I started off with that question.

PORTMAN: Do you have an answer to that one?

GYLLENHAAL: No, I don’t. I was just thinking that because you do so much wonderful work in the world, you must have met so many amazing people . . . There are more questions to come. This is just the Icebreaker section—although we might have just broken the ice. Okay, growing up, what were some of your favorite toys to play with?

PORTMAN: Oh, that’s really good. I was like a total clichéd ’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.

GYLLENHAAL: Do you remember Garbage Pail Kids?

PORTMAN: Oh, yeah. The cards.

GYLLENHAAL: They had names like Raked Jake and stuff like that.

PORTMAN: Raked?

GYLLENHAAL: Yeah. He was like a Cabbage Patch Kid who’d been raked over.

PORTMAN: [laughs] I remember as a kid being really scared of the Smurfs.

GYLLENHAAL: The Smurfs?

PORTMAN: Because that bad guy, Gargamel, was so terrifying. I was scared of a lot of cartoons. I’m kind of wussy like that.

GYLLENHAAL: That’s interesting because you seem so fearless.

PORTMAN: Really?

GYLLENHAAL: Yeah. Looking at all these things that you’ve done and contributed to the world so far, I would have thought that the evil wizard Gargamel would’ve been something you could have very easily stepped over.

PORTMAN: Thank you for saying that, but I’m far from fearless. I’m afraid of everything. But maybe when you’re afraid of everything, it sort of seems like you’re scared of nothing.

GYLLENHAAL: Well, there’s no courage without fear, so you must have great courage because you’re afraid of everything.

PORTMAN: That sounds like something from a Batman movie: “There is no courage without fear . . . ”

GYLLENHAAL: [laughs] Yeah, but I do think that’s true.

PORTMAN: No, definitely . . . Well, I don’t know that it’s true about me, like, “I mean, totally! I’m totally fearless!” [laughs]