Natalie Portman keen on 'protecting' her two children amid Benjamin Millefied affair scandal
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Oscar winning actress Natalie Portman is a supermom in real life. The ‘Star Wars’ alum, who is famous for her role of Padme, is a busy mother of two children, whom she shares with her husband Benjamin Millepied. Portman has made a fine case of juggling her Hollywood career with raising her two children hands on. However, according two Page Six, she has her work doubled up in the wake of Millipied’s alleged affair with climate activist Camille Étienne, and is focussed on ensuring the betterment of her children. An insider told the news outlet, “Her biggest focus right now is protecting the kids.”
Portman, who is the proud mother of two children, Aleph, 12, and Amalia, 6, met the children’s father Benjamin Millepied on the sets of ‘Black Swan’ in 2009. As the filming was in full swing, Portman and Millepied’s love too blossomed quietly. In December 2010, Portman and Millepied not only announced their engagement and pregnancy, but during the Oscars 2011, she also gave a shout out to the New York Ballet’s principal dancer and the father of her first child, "To my love, Benjamin Millepied, who choreographed the film and has now given me my most important role of my life," as per People.
Aleph Portman-Millepied
According to Closer Weekly, the couple became parents for the first time with the birth of Aleph on June 14, 2011. During an appearance on 'The Ellen DeGeneres Show' in 2016, Portman, who is of Israeli descent, said about the significance of her son’s name, “It’s the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and it’s not really a name in Hebrew usually,” before adding, “But it has a lot of mystical symbolic meanings of humility and strength.” In an interview with New Zealand Herald in 2015, she also excitedly shared that being a mother was an “exciting” and “magical” experience.
Amalia Millepied
The second of Portman’s brood arrived on February 22, 2017. The ‘V for Vendetta’ star who is a vocal activist for women's rights, even wrote a book named ‘Natalie Portman’s Fables’ where she chronicled her journey in motherhood. In a promotional letter on the book’s website, she wrote that she realized the requirement of an overhaul and retelling of classic stories from the women’s point of view as there was a lack in the “whole new genre of literature, the feminist baby book.” She then decided to write her own book after the birth of her daughter as she “felt sad to explain to a small child that girls and women have so many obstacles or why they are treated differently, before they’ve even started experiencing the world”.
‘I feel like it’s the phase of my career where I’m really trying to just impress my kids’
While the Oscar winning actress has generally kept her children out of the spotlight, they have played a huge role in shaping up her Hollywood career as well as her development as a human being. In an interview to Variety in 2022, the ‘Thor’ actress said, “I feel like it’s the phase of my career where I’m really trying to just impress my kids,” before explaining, “My five-year-old and my 10-year-old were so enthralled by this process, getting to visit the set and see me dressed up in a cape. It made it really cool. You know, it’s very rare that my kids are like: ‘Please go to work!’ Usually, it’s quite the opposite.”