Natalie Portman to receive Palm Springs Fest Award for ‘Jackie’

While on the outside the two seemed like the flawless couple, many rumors have swirled over the years about promiscuity and betrayal behind the presidential curtain.

Williams: I just remember one day on set being all Marilyn-ed out and seeing people look at me. The pitfalls are so plentiful, it’s rather miraculous to find a movie that misses a lot of them and yields such a memorable image of Jackie Kennedy. As per USA Today, she portrays her character very well; she even made a research regarding her role, which is very important.

The story of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy in the days immediately following the assassination of her husband is one that has not been lacking for dramatic interpretation. It is a moving and fiercely effective portrait of a woman who must stand up for herself, and her late idolized husband, at a time when it is unimaginable to do so. Ahead, Larrain explains the nuances involved with bringing Jackie to fruition. But, yeah, it ended up being like that. But it’s been a very lovely experience.

“But sometimes through the art of fiction, you can get at a truth that might be higher than factual truth with an emotional truth, and that’s what we’re hoping for”.

For Natalie, the most hard scene to film was the seven-minute journey to the hospital after JFK was shot in the head. “[She] really understood history and really understood that the people who write history are the ones who define it”. But she was such a substantive person, and I don’t think I had considered her deep intellect, strength, and control. “It was the most horrific thing you’re imagining”. The script was wonderful and then the Warren Commission Report would describe how he was assassinated: like one bullet here and one bullet there, third bullet in the skull.

In addition to mastering the icon’s tone-switching, the 35-year-old Oscar victor also had to figure out how Jacqueline Kennedy walked, drank, smoked, danced, cursed, laughed, cried and – in one harrowing sequence – blanched in terror while scrambling out of the backseat of a presidential limo. This long post-election moment shall pass, for those of us wallowing in it, before transforming into who knows what.

Of course, she’s not the sole reason for the film’s success.

Q: What do you hope audiences will take away from the film? He stays by her side, or up close and personal.

We will select the winners at random. That has been re-created brilliantly in a movie that is a wonder of production and costume design, as well as hair, makeup, cinematography and other crafts converging to take us right back to the Camelot era. “That’s what you dream about when you’re making something”. When did you know that you wanted to really do this for your life?

It’s interesting you said “whoever”. I thought, “Oh, no, I’m setting myself up for failure big time here”. It’s a amusing thing, you know? It’s a very good performance. Caspar Phillipson makes an impressive JFK, and Billy Crudup’s performance as the unnamed journalist interviewing Jackie Kennedy – firm one moment, fumbling and backtracking the next, nearly cowering when Mrs. Kennedy calls him on the carpet – is organic and up to the task.

It was one of the challenges. But she points out that it’s not just actresses who find there aren’t many opportunities for them in the movie and television business. “Very able to author your own story, and she really became the author of her own story – and his story”. But “Jackie” is more like “Black Swan”, where the strain is part of the role. And I think there’s something in Natalie’s eyes, man. Furthermore, the movie is a mixture of elegance, intelligence, sophistication, as well as fragility. “Watching it in retrospect, you get the sense that she nearly had this instinct that something was coming”. Also, I don’t claim to have any truth about Jackie. She’s still that iconic figure, as elusive as ever.

And so she proceeds to give him one – the helpful beginnings of a new American mythology complete with a glamorous young couple, faceless enemies, and a brutal tragedy. And that’s what Natalie does so well, too.

The film is framed around an interview between Jackie and an unnamed journalist played by Billy Crudup. That’s the trick, the level of mystery that involves her. Maybe it’s the score by Mica Levi, which has drawn rave reviews, although I found it intrusive.

Unless, like you (because I believe in your tenacity), they guzzle psychological mania like a morning coffee.

I was like, why hasn’t anybody focused on these minutes that must be an eternity for her? I thought we were making something nearly like a documentary and then I saw it and I was like ‘What? What’s going to happen to this country?