| From the Mr. Showbiz website: Mars Attacks! landed at Mann's three days earlier, and rising starlet Natalie Portman chatted with us about her role in the star-studded space comedy. The fifteen-year-old Portman plays Taffy, the somber daughter of Jack Nicholson's American president (think Chelsea Clinton in a permanent funk.) "Chelsea's a little too happy to be Taffy," says Portman, adding that she had to assume gloom to portray the first daughter. "Tim [Burton, the director] really helped me with the character. He told me how weird it would be to live in the White House, how lonely it would be to live in the White House, and I thought about that a lot. It's a really weird thing to be the first kid." In a subtle example of character revelation, Taffy is moping about the White House and reading Siddhartha, Herman Hesse's introspective classic, when the aliens attack Earth. Burton agreed to include Hesse's soul-searching novel after Portman suggested it. "I wanted to do it. I was thinking that before the Martians take over, [Taffy] is kind of planning a revolt of her own. So, Siddhartha, I thought, would be a good touch." |
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