A big thanks to Fanatical for finding the full Vanity Fair Italia interview with Natalie. It went through a translation so it’s a bit rough but hopefully still an enjoyable read.

I liked this passage about Cate Blanchett and Aleph.

“I will have the guilt of all mothers who want to pursue more roles simultaneously. My friend Cate Blanchett, who is talented mother of three children, told me: when you’re dancing, you learn to dance. It is true, I’m sure you can get with the will to do almost everything. And then, Aleph is very lucky. He has two grandmothers who worship at his disposal.”

The soft shapes, typical of a young mother who still breastfeeds her son for ten months (to be expected in the next room, with the paternal grandmother), her face beaming, and the attitude of someone who does not ask more from life: Natalie Portman today, 30 years, a woman is completely different from that self-destructive dancer, last year she won the Oscar for best actress protagonist of the Black Swan.

“I am a lucky woman,” she repeats. One of fortunes is her collaboration with Dior, which she took as her witness the beauty (next September will be the face of an advert for a new product). It is for this reason that Natalie is in Paris, happy to spend some time in France, the home of his companion, dancer Benjamin Millepied. Benjamin and the actress met during the filming of Black Swan, and shortly thereafter decided to have a child: Aleph, born last June 14.

“I want my child to learn French and become familiar with the culture of this country,” Portman says, explaining that a child has had a sort of premonition. “When I was seven or eight years, I thought I read in my future that I had a very close relationship with France. My name is Natalie, because my parents listened to the song by Gilbert Bécaud before I was born, I studied French, and my first movie – Leon, Luc Besson – I shot here. When I first met Benjamin, I had the impression that the last box of the puzzle of my life had found its place.”

And now did the collaboration with Dior: how do you feel in the role of spokesperson for beauty?

“I do not know what convinced them to choose me, but I’m really happy. When I come here to prepare this country feel the clothes and I commend you to the hands of the make-up artist, the tailors and craftsmen working on my image. In the end, I feel like a real queen. I always carry my mother-in-law, who has done all his life a professor of dance, and other women of the family of Benjamin, to share moments of this incredible experience.”

Prepare a beauty campaign while still breast-feeding her son did not feel uncomfortable?

“One of my best friends, who is pregnant at this time, says something I find totally agree: it is men who change their attitude towards us when we are on the presses with motherhood. They are disoriented, they do not know have never been his father. We are well into our body that is rounded, and we do not feel at all uncomfortable. Indeed, we are quite attractive, very feminine in this situation, but perhaps it is they who can not seduce us more, because they are, which inhibits them. They are very funny: even the most ardent suitors become clumsy and awkward.”

It will be so rewarding to be surrounded by an army of professionals committed to maximizing your power of seduction.

“Sure. Especially after months spent changing diapers, clothes stained with regurgitation of milk, you want to feel beautiful, to take ownership of yourself, to change the skin, as well as clothing, makeup, or how.”

How has your life changed after the arrival of Aleph?

“From a practical standpoint, I stopped shopping, going out. Now my only luxury are the books, the movies that I buy on iTunes, the music I listen at home with Benjamin and the child. A child changes your world view, it makes you more sensitive, you have someone to protect, you want everything to be nicer and less aggressive. As soon as I could, I started to engage in partnership Free The Children, of which I am the ambassador, because the smaller, their welfare, have become the center of my interests.”

She is a woman engaged on several fronts. Succeed in balancing work, humanitarian work, life as a mother, a woman, a witness to beauty?

“I will have the guilt of all mothers who want to pursue more roles simultaneously. My friend Cate Blanchett, who is talented mother of three children, told me: when you’re dancing, you learn to dance. It is true, I’m sure you can get with the will to do almost everything. And then, Aleph is very lucky. He has two grandmothers who worship at his disposal.”