Columbia Pictures

In an interview at the time, Portman said that there was a lot of laughter on the Closer set, despite its disturbing and bleak look at relationships, "because Mike was there."

The director famously opted not to include a nude scene with Portman's character that was a part of the original stage version of the story. They filmed it, but the scene didn't make the final cut.

"Well, back to the trust issue: When you trust someone, you''re willing to do everything and make mistakes and really expose yourself inside-out," Portman said. "So we made sort of a pact that before...while we would shoot, we would just do everything. and then he cut it the way he cut, showed it to me [to] see if I agreed, and that's what happened. We both kept our parts of the deal."

And that respect ran both ways.

"It confuses people to think that someone so completely beautiful could be a first-rate actor, too," Nichols told The Guardian about Portman in 2007. 'It's hard to grasp, but it's happened. It's happened a few times before, with Garbo and Louise Brooks."