dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

The Fifth Element (1997) is ruined for many knowing the director Luc Besson was (32) started a romantic relationship with the blue alien lady, who was only 15.

Natalie Portman was 12 years old when she starred in Luc Besson's Léon: The Professional. At that time, Besson was in a relationship with Maïwenn Le Besco.

Maïwenn has claimed that the relationship between Portman’s character (Mathilda) and Jean Reno’s character (Léon) in Léon was partially inspired by her own real-life relationship with Besson, which began when she was 12 and he was 29.

A few years later, Besson cast Maïwenn as the blue alien Diva Plavalaguna in The Fifth Element. They married in 1992 when Maïwenn was 16 years old. She gave birth to their daughter, Shanna, in early 1993, also at the age of 16.

Portman described her pride and excitement in releasing the film, only to encounter se×ually explicit messages both directed toward her and made about her.

“I excitedly opened my first fan mail to read a r@pe fantasy that a man had written me,” she recalled.

"A countdown was started on my local radio show to my 18th birthday, euphemistically the date that I would be legal to sleep with. Movie reviewers talked about my budding bre@sts in reviews."

The experience, she said, changed the way she expressed herself publicly, in order to limit the ways she could be objectified by others.

"I understood very quickly, even as a 13-year-old, that if I were to express myself se×ually, I would feel unsafe," she said.

"And that men would feel entitled to discuss and objectify my body to my great discomfort. So I quickly adjusted my behavior. I rejected any role that even had a kissing scene and talked about that choice deliberately in interviews.”

>I didn't know the blue alien singer in the 5th Element was only 15?