Our First Lady of Sorrows

In the midst of newfound political turmoil, Natalie Portman revives Jacqueline Kennedy onscreen, a woman whose private resolve and public grace may have held the nation together.

- Boris Kachka

WHEN NATALIE PORTMAN finally committed to starring in Jackie, a jarringly intimate portrait of Mrs. Kennedy’s life just after JFK’s murder, her parents gifted her with a valuable piece of research. One Special Summer was a limited edition, book-length travelogue of scraps, scribblings, and illustrations written and drawn by a young Jacqueline Bouvier and her sister, Lee, during a 1951 tour of Europe. “It’s so funny—you just see these two wild girls having a great time,” says Portman. “It was really helpful to get this sense of who she was before.” By which she means, of course, before adulthood—before Jackie married into a political dynasty; before she lost her husband, her home, and her power in one fatal shot; and before she rapidly summoned the strength to enshrine not only JFK but also the undying myth of his administration as “Camelot,” a nickname Jackie was the first to use.

Born in Israel and having recently returned to Los Angeles after two years in France (her husband, Benjamin Millepied, was directing the Paris Opera Ballet), Portman feels a visceral connection to Jackie’s formative months abroad. “It’s thinking back to when you’re a young person, remembering that essential self,” she says. “That time in Europe totally affected the way she was as a First Lady.”