A provocative story about the friendship between a writer and an actress that explores the consequences of fame and the blurring of the lines between appearance and reality. That is the synopsis of Life of M (La vida de M), the novel by Rachel Clusk that goes on sale today. But there is a controversial detail that stands out in this book, which narrates the relationship of a writer with a former child star who lives in Paris while she tries to write her autobiography: that actress seems to be the doppelgänger of Natalie Portman. And her portrait is not exactly positive.
Rachel Clusk portrays M as empty, immature and cynical and as an intellectual fraud. It is a leading role for which Natalie Portman never auditioned. And yet, any reader who flips through the 192 pages of this novel will get the impression that its protagonist is the Oscar-winning actress from Black Swan. The parallels are undeniable, from references to her most famous roles to the fact that both M and the actress have two dogs and have moved to Paris.
And then we have the evident link between Natalie Portman and Rachel Clusk. The actress selected the author’s works for her online book club and invited her to a talk in 2022, calling her “one of my favorite writers”. Cusk, a Canadian-British writer trained at Oxford, has long been both praised and criticized for her uncompromising chronicles of personal identity. She is known for focusing on the pressures and sacrifices of women artists.
Rachel Cusk’s work has already brought her trouble before. Her 2009 memoir, Last Supper, about a summer she spent in Italy, earned a defamation lawsuit and the book was withdrawn from bookstores in England. In statements to The Guardian, the writer said, perhaps prophetic: “If you describe people and they recognize themselves, they can sue you.”
Is M really Natalie Portman?
According to American media outlets that have had access to the novel before its publication, the parallels between M and the actress are evident. Natalie Portman rose to fame at the age of 12 with the 1994 film Léon: The Professional, a role that has been harshly criticized for being too sexualized. The character of M in Clusk’s book was also a child actress and tells the narrator that “starring in a film had ended her childhood immediately.”
The novel Life of M, by Rachel Clusk.
In the era when her film debut was shot, Natalie Portman’s mother, Shelley Stevens, intervened to ensure that certain scenes featuring her daughter and her co-star, Jean Reno, who was 44 at the time of shooting, were removed from the final cut. In the book, M also experiences a similar situation.
To perform her role in Black Swan in 2011, the actress underwent an exhausting year of training with the New York City Ballet. M also starred in a ballet-related film, for which she trained with “emaciated ballerinas and heavy-smokers”. And the emotional crisis of the novel’s character relates to Natalie Portman’s own divorce, as she split from her husband, the dancer Benjamin Millepied—father of her two children, Aleph, 15, and Amalia, 9—in March 2024, after 11 years of marriage and amid allegations of infidelity.
However, when M confronts the fiction writer about that “hurtful” description, noting that she portrays her as a cold person, the author responds that it is not based on reality. “But you’re only interpreting a character – I told you. The character I invented. So, if that’s true, then it’s me you’re referring to,” we can read in Life of M.
Natalie Portman’s Big Outrage
With the book’s release turning into a full literary soap opera, the Internet speculates that the actress may have given the author permission to write a disguised autobiographical novel. However, other sources cited by the Daily Mail do not buy that version. “Natalie is a very private person, which is why she moved to Paris, so Rachel’s book has really angered her,” says a source close to the actress. And adds: “She believes it is a low blow and she is horrified by the rumors that she participated in the book in any way.”
The author of the novel, Rachel Clusk.
Another source told The Hollywood Reporter that, although it is undeniable that the character is inspired by the Hollywood star, “M bears no resemblance to Natalie Portman at all.” And regarding the relationship between the actress and the writer, it finally makes clear that “they have never been friends. Natalie is an admirer of hers. They both belong to those Parisian intellectual circles. The publisher would want people to believe they are intimate and that Rachel watched her for years. But it is fiction.”
