Natalie Portman: US school shootings a ‘civil war’

Hollywood star Natalie Portman calls school shootings America’s “civil war,” comparing the psychological torment they cause to the threat of terror attacks in Israel.

The Oscar-winning actress draws the parallel in Venice before the premiere of her new film about a traumatized pop diva, “Vox Lux,” which opens with a Columbine-style massacre.

“I have been interested in the questions around the psychology of what violence does to individuals and in mass psychology for some time, coming from a place where people have encountered violence for so long,” says the Israeli-born star, best known for “Black Swan.”

“Unfortunately it is a phenomenon we now experience regularly in the United States with the school shootings. As [the film’s director] Brady [Corbet] has put to me before, it is a kind of civil war and terror that we have in the US,” she tells reporters.

The regular mass killings were having a “psychological impact on every kid going to school every day and every parent dropping their kids off,” said Portman. “Small acts of violence can cause widespread torment.”

Portman, 37, plays a singer who is badly wounded in a bloodbath at her school but builds a pop career after she sings at a memorial for her classmates.

— AFP