Natalie Portman Shows You How Movies Are Made

Natalie Portman has launched a website called MakingOf.com, an internet community designed to give fans a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how movies are made.

Portman, along with co-founder Christine Aylward, recruited directors like Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace, Monsters Ball) and Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), and actors like Jason Bateman and Olivia Thirlby to share their experiences and give movie enthusiasts a glimpse behind the scenes of how films are made.

She publicly launched the website during a press conference at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival.

She said, “Christine and I have been friends for a few years now and we were just talking one night and I was like, ‘I wonder why there isn’t a website that sort of encapsulates the experience of visiting a friend on a film set.’ Every time a friend of mine came to visit [me on set] I was sort of reminded of how exciting a place it is to work and I was reminded how little we all know when you’re just a moviegoer.

“The site is supposed to encapsulate that experience and give it to people who don’t have a friend they can visit on a film set so they can say, ‘How do they do that? What are those jobs that exist that people don’t even know about on film sets?’”

—Sasha Perl-Raver