Natalie Portman Exchanges Emails With Jonathan Safran Foer

In this week's New York Times Style Magazine, actress Natalie Portman and author Jonathan Safran Foer, who have been friends for years, agreed to let their recent email conversations be published. Here are the first two:

>> On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 4:31 AM, Jonathan Safran Foer wrote:

Being the world’s last Hotmail user finally caught up with me a few months ago, and I lost virtually all of the correspondence I’d saved since getting the only email address I’ve ever had.

You came to one of my first readings for my first novel, and in the 15 years of friendship that have followed, we’ve known each other through many other firsts. In the process, we’ve exchanged a great number of emails: about work, parenting, religion, politics. You’re now on the brink of another first: the release of your directorial debut, “A Tale of Love and Darkness.” It’s most explicitly about a boy growing up in Jerusalem, in the final years of the British Mandate. But it’s every bit as much about mothers and sons, husbands and wives, dreams, depression, Jewishness and language itself.

When The Times suggested this piece, and it became clear we weren’t going to be in the same place for long enough to allow for a traditional profile — me observing you at the farmer’s market, etc., which would have felt ridiculous, anyway — I was happy to think of the lost correspondence being somehow replenished with, or redeemed by, a new exchange.

>> On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 10:47 AM, Natalie Portman wrote:

I’m so pleased to hear that our correspondence (at least my side of it) has disappeared into the digital abyss. I’m sure at the beginning of our emailing I was trying too hard to be smart and interesting. Now, of course, I’m comfortable enough to send you videos of a sax-playing walrus. But yes, of course we mainly discuss religion and politics. And don’t forget art! We also talk about art!

Read the full exchange at the New York Times.