Natalie Portman will join a coveted club alongside Katie Holmes, Jaclyn Smith, and Sarah Michelle Gellar — and it’s not just one of fame and fortune.
In the newly announced film Jackie, Portman will follow the aforementioned actresses (among others) in portraying iconic First Lady Jackie Kennedy. The film will depict the emotional first four days in Jackie Kennedy’s life after the assassination of beloved President John F. Kennedy.
Director Pablo Larrain (No) and producer Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, The Wrestler) helm the biopic, which will begin production at the end of 2015. Most recently, Larrain won acclaim for The Club, an allegory of a film deriding the Catholic Church scandal, which both Aronofsky and Portman loved.
“Jackie talks about the days when Jackie Kennedy becomes an icon but has lost everything,” said Vincent Maraval, who is selling the film through sales company Wild Bunch, to Variety.
Little else has been revealed about the film, which “shows Jackie at both her most vulnerable and her most graceful,” according to a press release, after the President was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963 with Kennedy at her side. We expect that the film will relive the feelings Jackie Kennedy had after the President’s death, her planning of his state funeral, which was based on Abraham Lincoln’s, and her leading the funeral procession to Arlington National Ceremony.
While Portman hasn’t been in the cinema limelight much lately, she’s got a busy upcoming schedule. Also on the docket are roles in Knights of Cups, A Tale of Love and Darkness, Jane Got a Gun, Weightless, and Planetarium. There’s also another biopic in the cards for Portman, featuring the former Star Wars and Black Swan star as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in On the Basis of Sex. Despite what promises to be a busy 2015 and 2016 ahead, she’s excited for Jackie.
“It’s obviously a fascinating subject material and also Pablo Larrain is a phenomenal director that Darren introduced me to,” she told Variety in a separate interview. “I’m a big admirer.”
