Los Angeles, Jan 9 (IANS): Actress Natalie Portman has described method acting as a luxury that women cannot afford, and said that she never attempted it to fulfill her duties as a wife and mother.

The 42-year-old actress has carved out a successful career in Hollywood since starting out in show business as a child and has even won an Academy Award but does not feel that as a woman she is able to fully immerse herself within character by actually living as them because of the other duties she is expected to fulfill within life as a wife and a mother.

She told The WSJ, "I've gotten very into roles, but I think it's honestly a luxury that women can't afford. I don't think that children or partners would be very understanding of, you know, me making everyone call me 'Jackie Kennedy' all the time."

The 'Black Swan' star added that no matter the class status of a woman, all females are "united" by the notion that they are perpetually "limited" by society when it comes to their destiny and how they can fulfil it, noting that every story about a woman is about her trying to "break free" of that convention.

She said, "No matter the circumstances of a woman's life, whether she's very privileged or underprivileged, the uniting factor is the limits placed by society on what women can be, how they can behave, what they're allowed to say and think and feel and do-so every woman's story is somehow trying to break free of (that)."

Meanwhile, Portman has lived in Paris for a while now and revealed that her goal this year is to master the French language.

She said, "My resolution is to really, actually learn French properly. I've lived in Paris for a year now, and I speak it well enough to get around, but I need proper French. That's my focus this year."