There is a new candid set from yesterday, featuring some quick snaps of Natalie, Benjamin and a zonked out Aleph leaving the Julliard Cafe.

Please be aware that Aleph is visible in all of the photos.

Before we get to the 2D goodness, a slight clarification. The reports today identified the event as a tribute to Elie Wiesel, holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner.

Natalie’s 10 minute speech was about the hosts of the dinner, The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and what they stand for. Where does Aung San Suu Kyi come into this? Well, she was the winner of this years Holocaust Memorial Museum Elie Wiesel Award.

It seems that Natalie also took time to talk about her, but she was not the main subject of the speech. Hopefully a video of that speech might find it’s way online at some point.

In any case, onto some photos, courtesy of Just Jared.

Natalie spoke a the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington last night, although it wasn’t to honour those who suffered during the war, rather it was an event for Aang San Suu Kyi, the Burmese politician.

I’m hoping there will be more information and photos from the event later, but for now here is a grainy preview image.

One Twitter attendee found Natalie’s speech “powerful” while another thought that Natalie was a “disappointment”.

We’ve added two HQ versions of the behind the scenes photos of Natalie on set for the music video, as well as a third slightly bigger version of the other photo.

It seems that Paul McCartney’s music video for My Valentine is rubbing some people the wrong way. Yahoo UK says that some of the signs were (hilariously) wrong.

In the black and white video for ‘My Valentine’, also directed by McCartney, the actress, makes the sign for the word ‘tampon’ instead of the word ‘appear’ as intended.

Meanwhile, Johnny Depp, who also appears in the video, signs ‘enemy’ instead of ‘valentine’.

The blunders were picked up by deaf viewers, who believe that confusion between American and British sign languages could be behind the gaffes.

That’s one theory, but Jezebel heard from the Sign Language Company in LA, and they coached Natalie and Johnny for the video. Their reasoning is a bit different…

(more…)

All hail, Fanatical, who has managed to find the elusive WWD interview. By now we’ve read most of it via other sources, but there are a few interesting items still to be found.

The info that caught my eye the most is that the Eating Animals documentary is beginning filming soon. Below is the excerpt that refers to that, and the full interview can be read here.

Other upcoming film projects count among them a documentary of Jonathan Safran Foer’s food manifesto “Eating Animals,” which is about to start production and will be directed by Christopher Quinn. (Portman is a vegetarian but generally a vegan.)

The LA Times has an article about the special premiere event for Paul McCartney’s new music video. It doesn’t seem as if Natalie was in attendance, although plenty of other stars showed up.

What’s most interesting is the fact that Natalie could actually do sign language before this video. Here’s how Paul explains it…

“Five or six months ago, Stella said: ‘Do you have a video for the song? You know that Natalie can [do] sign [language].’ And a week after Stella mentioned it, I was back here with the great cinematographer Wally Pfister…

*this is me now giving a thumbs up*

Kitten found some snaps of Natalie attending a screening of Chimpanzee, a Disneynature film. Natalie is photographed with one of her heroes, Jane Goodall, whose organization co-produced the film. You might recall that Natalie has supported Jane’s foundation before, like when she donated her humanitarian award at Cannes.

For the 30% of you guys, based on our poll, that are interested in Natalie’s producing only work on the upcoming ABC soapie pilot, Scruples, today is your lucky day…

In what appears to be quotes (courtesy of Celebrity-Gossip) from the still hiding WWD interview, Natalie talks about the show for the first time.

“It’s about a store opening in Beverly Hills modeled after the Dior salons. Which is really fun, full circle.”

Of producing, Natalie noted, “It’s really, really interesting to get a look at the other side of the process. Scary sometimes — because you hear about how people talk about actors and about hiring directors and writers and all of that.”

And Natalie couldn’t be happier with the subject matter. “I really have so much respect for both the legacy of [Dior] and also their tradition of very quietly being extremely generous. There’s so much opportunity to do well by doing good.”

We’ve got some good stuff for tomorrow, so a little deck clearing today in the form of some mini updates.

- There were a handful of Natalie NYC sightings on Twitter last week. Like this and this and this.

- One Direction are fans of Natalie’s SNL rap. I’ve never even heard of these guys, but they’ve surely never heard of me so we’ll call it a draw.

- Amo reckons that this is the ring that Natalie was flashing in this Paris photo, and I think she’s right. In which case there probably isn’t any special significance.

- Cutie, Summer Glau (Firefly), talks about Black Swan from around the 3 minute mark on this video.

Chris Hemsworth aka Thor, has spoken to Slashfilm about the upcoming sequel.

Most notable is that the film will shoot in August, but he also mentions reading the script and meeting with Natalie and new director, Alan Taylor. Apparently Taylor wants to bring a bit more of a tangible quality to Asgard, which should be a good thing because as pretty as it was in the first film, it never felt like a real place.

What’s also encouraging is a Collider interview with Marvel honcho, Kevin Feige, in which he admits the Thor-Jane relationship was a “quick crush”, and that the evolution of their relationship will be the primary focus of the sequel.

WWD has a new photo an interview with Natalie, from the Paris visit, but the interview is only for subscribers. So if anyone out there is a subscriber…*nudge nudge*.

We do have a couple quotes from the interview, thanks to British Vogue, but of most importance is this really nice new photo.