Natalie Portman Says Lauren Bacall Didn't Like Her

Lauren Bacall had no patience for an indecisive director — even if that director was Natalie Portman. When she was 26 years old, Portman directed the octogenarian Bacall in the 2008 short film Eve. In an interview promoting her feature-length directorial debut A Tale of Love and Darkness, Portman remembered that the Hollywood legend (who died in 2014 at the age of 89) didn’t much like her.

“I must be honest: She did not like me, but I loved her and admired her so much,” Portman said during a panel discussion on Thursday (via Us Weekly). “She sensed in me what I learned later about myself…that I had a really hard time saying what I wanted and being the boss.”

Portman had little directing experience when she made Eve, a 17-minute comedy that played at the Venice Film Festival in 2008. (Around the same time, Portman directed a six-minute segment of the anthology film New York I Love You, which premiered in theaters in 2009.) A Tale of Love and Darkness, a drama about a Jewish family who moves to Palestine in the 1940s, is the first thing she’s directed since. Portman also starred in, wrote, and produced the Hebrew-language film, based on the bestselling memoir by Amos Oz. Yet despite having major control over the production, Portman still found it difficult to assert herself as a director…at first.

“It took me a few weeks to be comfortable saying ‘I want this,’ ‘I want that,’” Portman explained.“When I was 26 on Eve with [Lauren Bacall] I was not decisive, and she called me out on it and was totally right.” (The movie, which premiere at Cannes in 2015, just opened in limited release.)

Even though Ball touched a nerve with her criticism, Portman has nothing but admiration for the late actress. “She was a total pro, despite the fact that she was so unimpressed by me,” said the director. “She was amazing in every take.”

Watch a trailer for ‘A Tale of Love and Darkness:’