Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman has been in the limelight since her early teenage years, but she did not have it easy. The 39-year-old actress has opened up about being sexualized from a very young age on the podcast Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard.

Natalie Portman played her first ever role at the age of 12 in Léon: The Professional and appeared in Beautiful Girls two years later. The Marvel star has now revealed that even at a young age, she was aware of the fact that she was being cast in sexualized roles, which prompted her to later build walls around herself. Talking about a 1955 novel about a middle-aged professor's obsession with a 12-year-old girl, Portman reportedly said, I was definitely aware of the fact that I was being portrayed... as this Lolita figure. Being sexualized as a child, I think took away from my own sexuality because it made me afraid and it made me like the way I could be safe was to be like, 'I'm conservative,' and 'I'm serious and you should respect me,' and 'I'm smart,' and 'don't look at me that way.' Whereas at that age, you do have your own sexuality and you do have your own desire, and you do want to explore things and you do want to be open. But you don't feel safe, necessarily, when there's older men that are interested, and you're like, 'No, no, no, no.'

The Black Swan actress added that people were under the impression that she was conservative and that it helped her feel safe. So many people had this impression of me that I was super serious and conservative... and I realized I consciously cultivated that because it was always to make me feel safe. Like, 'Oh, if someone respects you, they're not gonna objectify you.' When I was in my teens I was like, 'I don't wanna have any love scenes or make-out scenes.' I would start choosing parts that were less sexy because it made me worried about the way I was perceived and how safe I felt, she explained.