Natalie Portman last appeared in Star Wars for 2005’s Revenge of the Sith
Natalie Portman last appeared in a Star Wars film in 2005, but she’s not saying “no” to a return to the space opera franchise.
While Portman, 41, took part in a GQ video series in which she responded to fan questions, the actress came across a Reddit post in which a Star Wars fan wondered whether the actress may reprise her role as Padme in a future project.
“I have no information on this. No one’s ever asked me to return, but I’m open to it,” Portman said.
Portman famously portrayed the character Padme Amidala in the three Star Wars prequel movies directed by George Lucas in the late 1990s and 2000s.
Though the character plays an important role in that trilogy as a love interest to Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) and eventual mother to twins Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa, Padme’s death at the end of 2005’s Revenge of the Sith has kept her out of projects set later in the franchise’s history.
During the GQ video segment, in which Portman discussed her Oscar-winning role as a ballet dancer in Black Swan and her role as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in 2016’s Jackie, she also recalled that her Thor: Love and Thunder director Taika Waititi once forgot she ever starred in Star Wars altogether.
“He says he did ’cause he like asked me if I wanted to be in a Star Wars movie and I was like, ‘I was,’ ” Portman recalled, when prompted by a second Reddit post in the video. “I thought he was joking – he’s such a joker that I thought it was a joke. And then afterwards he said in some interview that he was like cringing afterwards.’
Waititi, 47, admitted to the slip-up in an interview with Rolling Stone last July, during which he said he and Portman had discussed working together again during production on the fourth Thor movie.
“Natalie said to me, what do you do next? And I said ‘I’m trying to work on a Star Wars thing. Have you ever wanted to be in a Star Wars movie?’ She said, ‘I’ve been in Star Wars movies,’ ” Waititi recalled of their conversation.
“I forgot about those ones,” he told the outlet at the time.
Though Lucasfilm announced in April that it will produce a new series of Star Wars films — including Daisy Ridley’s return to the franchise — the studio does not appear to have any films in the works set that could see Portman return as Padme.
Portman’s new movie May December made its world premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival on Sunday.
