When an Actress Asks a Novelist for a Portrait—and Gets a Scalpel Instead

By Andy — 2026-07-29 — Literary News

I watched this drama unfold on Twitter like it was a slow-motion car crash. Rachel Cusk's upcoming novel, Life of M, is rumored to be based on her real-life friendship with actress Natalie Portman.

They were friends. More or less.

Cusk and Portman have been friendly for several years, and are apparently mutual fans. Portman selected Cusk's novel Parade for her book club back in 2024, and there has been at least one warm public discussion between the actor and the novelist. She called Cusk one of her favorite writers. Then came the book.

The novel, which will be published next month, is about a famous actress, M, and a nameless writer-friend's project to chronicle her. And here's where it gets uncomfortable. M's key biographical information is very similar to Portman's. Child star, European city, a Dior campaign, a dance film role—actually, that's not quite right. Not exactly a dance film role in M's case, but something close enough that you don't need Valerie Stivers spelling it out in her Unherd column to recognize the shape of the thing.

The unflattering bit.

Cusk is known for her brutally honest autofictional characters, and writes M as an untouchable Hollywood figurehead donning a relatable façade that masks a self-righteous core that leaves loved ones feeling ugly in her well-coiffed shadow. Which, as one source put it, is something like this: "her skill has always been at reducing the human to the mathematical product of cold existential forces: the violent struggle between men and women; the primal wounds left by abuse; the emptiness at the heart of identity."

This isn't Cusk's first rodeo with the lawsuit clause.

In 2009, the English novelist Rachel Cusk wrote The Last Supper, a memoir about a trip to Italy; a month after it appeared, its publisher was forced to withdraw the first print run and pulp the books because somebody had recognized himself and was threatening to sue for breach of privacy. She's been here before. She knows what she's doing.

And Portman, by some accounts, did say yes. According to Unherd editor Valerie Stivers, Portman permitted the Outline author to use her life as a jumping-off point for her new fiction book, Life of M, a book about a movie star which is set for an August 25th release. Though other sources close to the actress are attempting to distance her from the book, disputing such claims. These sources told the Times that Portman and Cusk have never been friends and the few times they have met included the virtual interview Portman conducted for her book club.

So which is it.

The actress's dissatisfaction and betrayal at the finished product, as recorded in the final pages of the book, is also said to be true to life. Whether that's Portman's actual dissatisfaction or Cusk's invention of it—well, that's the whole game, isn't it. It's ironic in the extreme, since the impossibility of identity itself — and thus of anything being, truly, "true to life" — is the book's central theme, a fact that says more about Cusk than it ever could about Portman.

The smarter take here, from my vantage point at the bookshop, is less about whether Portman knew or didn't know. It's about what it means to invite a writer—any writer—into your life with a camera ready. You can't unsee what they choose to see. Cusk isn't the first novelist to turn a friendship into a character sketch, and she won't be the last.

But she's one of the better ones at it.