Tag: Natalie Portman

The day’s light was fading, but the cast and crew of “Thor” were making good headway on a battle scene — a giant, fire-breathing alien automaton was laying waste to a tiny desert town. Still, director Kenneth Branagh kept glancing at the horizon with anxious Irish eyes. The Marvel Studios and Paramount production already had been battered by windstorms, and on that April day last year, Branagh feared another tempest was on the way. Sure enough, a few minutes later, Branagh’s team was in a mad scramble to save lighting gear, cast chairs, script sides, props and their own eyesight from the winds barreling through the main drag of their faux city, which recalled both old Edward Hopper paintings and young Dennis Hopper films. Later, Branagh, whose crew also dealt with rain, frigid nights and mud, was sanguine about the ...

DAYS OF THUNDER: We’re counting down to the May 6 release of “Thor” with a month of on-the-set reports, exclusive photos and interviews with the cast and crew of the first truly cosmic Marvel Studios film. Today: Kat Dennings. In a film populated by noble warriors, blue frost giants, and dour government agents, Kat Dennings plays a sort of ambassador representing the popcorn nation of the young moviegoers who are the target audience for “Thor” when it opens May 7. “My character is the one who says what the audience is thinking, she’s like ‘Wait, whaaaat’?” Dennings said with an appropriately dramatic flair. Sitting in her trailer during a break from shooting last year on the New Mexico set,  she explained that her character, Darcy, is a college student who is “a helper gnome” to scientist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who finds herself in the middle of ...

DAYS OF THUNDER: We’re counting down to the May 6 release of “Thor” with a month of on-the-set reports, exclusive photos and interviews with cast and crew of the first truly cosmic Marvel Studios film. Today: Co-star Natalie Portman talks about her character. Natalie Portman’s character danced on the edge of sanity for “Black Swan” but this summer in “Thor” the 29-year-old actress tries a different mind game as she portrays a thinker of big thoughts who has a hard time with the day-to-day world – and then questions her grip on reality after meeting the film’s cosmic title character. Portman plays Jane Foster, a scientist who is far different than the character of the same name who appeared in the 1960s Marvel comics that first introduced her as the Earth-born love interest of  the blond-tressed God of Thunder. Portman said director Kenneth Branagh made it clear that ...