ver since Natalie Portman signed on to play Dr. Don Blake's love interes

Ever since Natalie Portman signed on to play Dr. Don Blake's love interest Jane Foster in Kenneth Branagh's upcoming Thor, the actress hasn't done a ton of interviews, so we haven't had much of a chance to learn about her take on the character.

At the press conference for Jim Sheridan's Brothers, a terrific drama in which Portman is quite astounding as a young mother whose husband is a soldier who has gone missing and presumed dead in Afghanistan, we tried our best to broach the subject, trying to find out why she decided to do it, having already starred in one comic book movie (V For Vendetta) as well as starring in one of the biggest sci-fi franchises of all time (Do we even have to name it?). We also were hoping to find out what sort of research or comics she might have read for the role, and whether it might be a big part, considering that much of the movie will probably take place in Asgard.

Unfortunately, the press conference environment is not the best place to get into this sort of thing--and we felt quite guilty even asking about it--but she did tell us at least why she did want to be in the movie:

"I just thought it sounded like a weird idea because Kenneth Branagh's directing it, so I was just like, 'Kenneth Branagh doing 'Thor' is super-weird. I've gotta do it'," she told us, before a journalist interrupted her answering our question because he didn't even know who Jane Foster was (The heathen!). Sadly, she never got to the rest of our question, but hopefully, we'll get another chance to talk to her before the movie comes out.

You can learn more about Brothers when we run some of the best bits of the press conference as well as our exclusive interview with Jim Sheridan over on ComingSoon.net.