Natalie Portman holds her own starring opposite Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal in the emotionally wrenching Brothers.

Natalie Portman: 'I'm Coming Into My Womanhood'

Natalie Portman holds her own starring opposite Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal in the emotionally wrenching Brothers. In the drama, she plays a wife and mother coping with the apparent loss of her military husband by bonding with his black-sheep brother.

Portman can next be seen making some fantastic moves as a prima ballerina in Black Swan, and she'll soon be sharing the set with the newest big-screen comic-book hero Thor. Parade.com's Jeanne Wolf found out why the 28-year-old star couldn't say no to playing a mom.

A role she's been waiting for.
"It was such a fantastic opportunity because so many parts written for females my age are just, like, the cute, girlish love interest. To get to play a real woman who's really strong and a good mother was really a great opportunity. It was not that challenging to be mother-ish because I have the most maternal mom in the world. So I've had a role model for my entire life."

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Maybe she's getting closer to a family of her own.
"I feel like I'm coming into my womanhood, and I'm less afraid or maybe I'm just getting old. I think about having kids, but I think you can't plan for that sort of thing. It's not like you can work at it."

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But she wouldn't send her kids to war.
"I could not do it myself. But, I also think that in the world we live in, in certain countries, you can't not have an army. Obviously, I'm referring specifically to Israel. I think if Israel didn't have an army, it wouldn't exist. That's a hypothesis I really wouldn't want to test, like the Israelis going, 'OK, let's just try it out and not have an army and see what happens.'"

The women that soldiers leave behind.
"I talked to military wives who really gave me a sense of the strength that it takes to have your spouse fighting a war overseas. They have to be tough, too. I think that women are remarkably able to deal with bad times and just sort of take control when it needs to happen. They have a great survival mechanism. In the history of warfare, while the men were away, the women were taking care of everything at home. They show this incredible capacity to sort of rise to the occasion."

Now she's putting on a tutu.
"I'm in full ballet mode right now playing a ballerina in Black Swan. I danced until I was like 13, but I definitely remember being better than I am. I was like, 'Wow, I was pretty good as a kid.' Then I went into ballet class, and I was like, 'I'm not good at all. I really suck.' So it's been challenging."

Keeping her role in Thor, the next Marvel comics blockbuster, under wraps.
"I think everyone has gotten more secretive just because of the preponderance of technology that can scam just about anything. It's like you don't get a script anymore that doesn't have watermarks that would identify you if you ever tried to leak anything. The Thor script is hard to read because it's on some weird colored paper and they have your name in huge letters across every page. And any time you get a phone call from Marvel, it doesn't come up as a normal number, it's like a five digit code. I've never seen that before. I've had phone calls from people in the government and they don't have that. Marvel's like some like crazy underground world."