Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Natalie Portman Just Did Right By All Women At The Golden Globes

Natalie Portman, resplendent in a decadent velvet gown and her signature face-that-looks-like-it-was-personally-architected-by-God, almost made a huge mistake at the 2018 Golden Globe Awards.

She followed Oprah.

After Oprah Winfrey’s exceptionally barn-burning acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille Award, a speech that brought the entirety of the Hollywood glitterati to its feet with an evangelical zeal reminiscent of the prophet Amos, did anyone really want to hear from Natalie Portman? Natalie Portman, who is best known for being in the worst “Star Wars” movies and engaging in an excruciatingly exhibitionist email correspondence with Jonathan Safran Foer?

Never bet against Natalie Portman.

Appearing reluctantly with Ron Howard to announce the winner for Best Director directly after Oprah, both the director and Portman looked out of place after Winfrey’s speech praising women’s fight for equality throughout history. But as the pair prepared to deliver the award, Portman quietly said, “Here are the all-male nominees.”

All.

Male.

“The all-male nominees.”

This will teach me to doubt Natalie Portman. This will teach us all to doubt Natalie Portman.

In the moment allotted to her, the actress managed to take a ruthless jab at patriarchal systems without stealing focus from Oprah’s success. It was the classiest way imaginable to humble a group of powerful men at the height of their careers. A tiny castration! A ritual, symbolic bloodletting. A circumcision, if you will.

And in the time since I began writing this piece, the slighted director of “Lady Bird,” Greta Gerwig, beat out male-helmed movies to win the award for Best Picture – Musical or Comedy.

It looks like time really is up.

Jenny Singer is a writer for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.