Natalie Portman and Michelle Williams Interview Each Other

Natalie Portman and Michelle Williams recently sat down to have a conversation for Variety's Actors on Actors, which will premiere on PBS in January. Here are some of the highlights from their conversation:

Portman: You started really young also. How do you feel that changed the way you are now as an actor? When did you know that you wanted to really do this for your life?

Williams: How old were you when you started?

Portman: Eleven.

Williams: I was around the same age. It’s a funny thing, you know? It turned out all right. But it isn’t a life that I would want necessarily. It was really hard when I started out, and the bottom of absolutely every barrel. My first agent was a part-time undertaker.

Portman: No! That’s a really good pair of professions to match.

Williams: It worked out OK. It’s a really long way, and not necessarily a very nice one. It’s a hard childhood to have — or a lack of a childhood to have. I do love doing it, and I can’t really imagine doing anything else. I want to keep doing it. But when I see kids on the set, or when I work with kids in movies, I feel really torn about their role there.

Portman: Yes, and we end up doing that a lot, too — more than men — because so many female parts are moms. I feel like I always work with a kid.

Williams: I know. And I feel an extra protectiveness and also a desire to be like, “So, do you have any other interests?”

Portman: Someone was saying recently: Think about what you love when you’re 11. Adults who are feeling lost, try and regain that. And it’s funny that they pinpointed that age, because you say you started then. That’s when I started. I feel that there is something around that time where you do have an instinct about what you really love. I don’t know where it came from, because there’s no one in my family who was ever a performer. I came from such a serious, academic family, where the only thing that was acceptable was to be very literate and educated — you become a professor or a doctor or a lawyer. My dad pulled me aside when I was 25 and was like, “I think it’s time for you to go to law school or grad school.” Not that he was saying that acting was bad, but more that he was like, “I think you’ll be more fulfilled if you have something more — like a life of the mind.” So it took me a while, coming from that background, to be like, “This is what I want, and this is what I love. I enjoy this.”

Read the full interview at Variety.