Natalie Portman took a while to realize how much sexism and harassment she had encountered.
The Oscar winner opened up about her own experiences amid an avalanche of accusations in Hollywood.
"When I heard everything coming out, I was like, wow, I'm so lucky that I haven't had this. And then, on reflection, I was like, OK, definitely never been assaulted, definitely not, but I've had discrimination or harassment on almost everything I've ever worked on in some way," she said at Vulture Festival L.A. Sunday.
"I went from thinking I don't have a story to thinking, Oh wait, I have 100 stories. And I think a lot of people are having these reckonings with themselves, of things that we just took for granted as like, this is part of the process."
Once, she said, a producer invited her on a private plane, which she assumed was a group activity.
When she arrived, it was just the two of them, and one made bed.
"Nothing happened. I was not assaulted," she said. "I said, 'This doesn't make me comfortable' and that was respected but was super not OK. That was really unacceptable and manipulative. I was scared."
Portman also said she was reluctant to take on overtly sexual roles when she was younger.
"There was definitely a period where I was reluctant to do any kind of kissing scenes, sexual scenes. Because (for) my first roles, the reaction people would (give) in reviews (was to) call me a Lolita and things like that, and I got so scared by it," she said at Vulture Festival.
"And I think that's also got to be part of our conversation now: When you're defensive as a woman against being looked at that way, that you're like, 'I don't want to' _ what do we close off of ourselves or diminish in ourselves because we want to protect ourselves?"
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