Natalie Portman, Keira Knightley Look So Alike Their Moms Mixed Them Up
When it came to casting Queen Padmé and her twin daughters in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, the filmmakers did an almost too good job. When George Lucas met two surprisingly similar teenage actresses, Natalie Portman and Keira Knightley, to play Padmé and Sabé in The Phantom Menace, he left them a lasting bond.
To this day, Knightley and Portman, who each had spectacular careers in Hollywood, are often listed among the odd double stars. Behind the scenes of The Phantom Menace, the crew and even the girls' mothers struggled to tell Knightley and Portman apart, who were 12 and 16, respectively, at the time of filming.
Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem in 1981 and later grew up in Washington, DC and New York. One of Natalie Portman's first appearances was on the Off-Broadway show Ruthless! (1992), in which she and Britney Spears stood in for show star Laura Bell Bundy.
Portman rose quickly in films like Leon: The Professional (1994) and Heat (1995), but rose to worldwide fame in 1997 when she was cast as Queen Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel films, a surprising choice for a young actress.
"I certainly wasn't actively pursuing that role," Portman now notes, "but like any other movie, I met and talked to the casting director, and then I met George [Lucas] and talked to him, and I I hadn't seen the movies until they were offered to me, so I really had no idea what Star Wars was.
Many of Portman's scenes were filmed in Algeria, where he worked alongside an army of on-screen stuntmen. Among them was Keira Knightley, an English actress four years younger than Portman. Knightley played Sabé, one of Padmé's favorite decoys, with Portman's voice eventually dubbed over Knightley's dialogue.
With the elaborate wardrobe and dramatic makeup combined with their close facial resemblances, Knightley and Portman constantly blended together during filming. Knightley has since described the puzzling experience: "I didn't know what I was doing because it was so secret I didn't have a script. I saw the movie when I was 13 and I didn't know. still not sure what was going on."
Knightley's mother, playwright Sharman Macdonald, was anything but your typical stage mother. She herself quit acting in the 1980s due to crippling stage fright and has avoided interviews since, although she said she doesn't regret her daughter's career choice: "Of course he there are downsides, but you don't know it when you walk in.
For Portman, the biggest surprise of Star Wars was not the filming experience, but the negative audience reception and sexualization of young stars like her and Knightley early in their careers, to whom they were constantly sent to the same roles.
As a teenager, Knightley was aware of how other young stars, including Portman, were similarly perceived. At 18, she told SPIN, "There's a lot of brown-haired, brown-eyed actresses that I meet three from every audition because we're always up for the same roles."
As an adult, however, Knightley enjoys one difference from his peers: his height. At 1.7m, she is 10cm taller than Portman. However, fans to this day confuse Knightley with Portman, who recovered from the backlash of the Star Wars prequels to star in V for Vendetta (2005), Black Swan (2010) and biographical drama Jackie (2016). ).
"I still confuse myself a lot with Natalie Portman, and they chase me through airports," Knightley noted in 2014, Natalia! Natalie! Natalie!" And I'll sign and take a picture as Natalie."
Knightley, who became one of Britain's highest-earning actresses of the 2000s thanks to her role in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, also referenced her other Hollywood doubles, including Anne Hathaway.
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