Natalie Portman took to Instagram to thank her friends who were there for her during her divorce from Benjamin Millepied.
Natalie Portman feels grateful for her supportive circle of friends as she celebrates another year around the sun. The 43-year-old actress marked her birthday on Sunday with a special shoutout to her pals on Instagram.
"This year, on my birthday, I want to celebrate my gratitude for my friends who lift me up again and again," Portman captioned a carousel of photos showing her enjoying quality time with her friends.
Many of the snaps appear from recent events, including an after-party at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and the Dior Fall-Winter 2023-2024 fashion show in Paris, France.
Several of Portman's friends filled the post's comments section with heartfelt birthday wishes.
"@natalieportman happy birthday gorgeous lady," Tracee Ellis Ross wrote.
"Happy birthday, beautiful!" Mindy Kaling added.
Portman's post comes after the Oscar winner finalized her divorce from Benjamin Millepied in February after over a decade of marriage.
Portman and the French choreographer, who met on the set of Black Swan in 2009, initially separated in May 2023 after reports surfaced of Millepied's alleged extramarital affair. Portman quietly filed for divorce in France that July. Portman and Millepied have two children together: son Aleph, 12, and daughter Amalia, 6, and they've resided primarily in Paris in recent years.
While navigating her divorce, Portman has leaned on her tightknit group of friends for support, as highlighted in her heartfelt birthday post.
She recently addressed her marriage to Millepied, a professional dancer, in Vanity Fair's 30th annual Hollywood issue.
As for how the actress felt about all the chatter regarding her relationship, the May December star said, "It's terrible, and I have no desire to contribute to it."
Separating her public and private lives is something Portman has been dealing with her entire career, which began when she was just a child.
"I got very protective of it very early on," she told VF. "I chose a different name when I started, which was kind of an interesting way that I separated identities. I would get upset if someone at school called me Natalie Portman. I was like, 'If you know me, you know me as Natalie Hershlag at school.' It was kind of an extreme bifurcation of identity that I've tried to integrate a little bit more as an adult."
"I felt like it was not accepting that both were part of me, that there wasn't a 'real' me and a 'pretend' me, and that they didn't necessarily have different names," Portman continued. "And it's not just two different versions, there are multitudes of ways other people see me, both public and private, and there are multitudes of ways I see myself."
She added, "Somehow the intersection of all of those are part of me, and it's important to have all of those within me and as me, as opposed to being like, that's some external thing, this is the real thing. As I started having kids and a family, I started realizing that maybe it was not helpful to be like, there's two of me. I have many interactions during my day as a public person. To exclude that from my experience is not real."
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