Natalie Portman: Forbidden Love

In addition to the movie's philosophical underpinnings, the actress said she's also proud to be in movies that continue to push the boundaries of filmmaking.

"It's pretty exciting to be working with the digital video, because it's the way a lot of films are going now," she said, adding that having scenes run on monitors as they're being shot saves a lot of time on the set. "It's great for hair, make-up, and wardrobe, because they can see the exact colors, or for the director of photography, because he can see the exact lighting. For actors, I don't think it changes that much, because I never watch myself after I do a scene. It'll make me too self-conscious, so I don't really deal with those monitors very often."

Portman even looks on the movie's technological achievements as a lesson in humility. "It's great to be on a film like Star Wars, because you realize how little a part of everything you are as an actor," Portman said with a laugh. "Usually on films, you're the center of attention, and being in Star Wars puts you in your place because you realize that it still takes two years after you finish shooting until the film is done. You learn to respect the entire crew because you realize how big a part every person is. There are so many people working on the film, and it's very exciting to see the finished product because it's like seeing a movie for the first time. You see all the sets and characters, and it's like a completely different film than the one you made."

For that reason, watching The Phantom Menace for the first time was a little disorienting, Natalie said. "I was very surprised when I saw The Phantom Menace, because it was completely different visually from anything I had seen," she recalled. "We shot a lot against blue screens, and a lot of the characters were computer generated. Even when they show you sketches of what it will look like, you really can't imagine.

"Working in front of a blue screen is the hardest kind of acting, because everything is in your imagination," she continued, noting that it's very different from acting in a play. "On stage, the best way to work is to let yourself go and be into it, because you've got your set, your costumes, all the actors, and you're working in sequence, so it's easy to feel the situation. But in front of a blue screen, you have to imagine everything--your setting around you, sometimes even characters. It's a very difficult skill to learn how to look at a character that's not there, and his voice may be coming from a completely different direction. You constantly want to be looking to wherever the voice is coming from."

By the time she shot Attack of the Clones, Portman was an old pro at acting against blue screen backgrounds. "Having been through the experience of making The Phantom Menace and then seeing it, that made things different," she said. "I didn't understand when making The Phantom Menace what anything was going to look like, or what characters were going to look like, or why it was important to keep a certain eye line. It didn't even cross my mind, but now that I've seen the images and how amazing they are, and how real the characters are, I feel like I can really interact with them."

Good thing, because, "There's a lot of blue screen on this film," she said, "much more than on the last film. Pretty much every set has blue screen, even if it's just out a window or something." The key, she said, is simple: "It's imagination--that's why blue screen acting is maybe the purest form of acting, because it's like being a little kid in a cardboard box and thinking it's a spaceship. That's the point you have to get to--pure imagination."

Sometimes, though, she still yearns for the real thing. "It's a little disappointing sometimes," she admitted. "We had a speeder we were working on one of the first days, and it looked so cool. It seemed more like a ride than a set--which I think is always pretty exciting at work. It had all these buttons and gadgets, and you get so excited and want to touch everything--but none of them are real. They look like buttons, but you go to press them and it's just, like, a little square pasted on. That's very disappointing because it just looked so cool in the movie, and it's not real at all."