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Tara Aquino<\/b><\/span>\u00a0and Mental_Floss<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>present 11 Expert Facts About Leon: The Professional<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0<\/strong>Here are three of my favorites<\/span>…<\/p>\n 1. NATALIE PORTMAN\u2019S PARENTS WERE COMPLETELY AGAINST HER PLAYING MATHILDA.<\/span><\/strong> 4. PORTMAN\u2019S PARENTS ARE THE REASON WHY MATHILDA QUITS SMOKING IN THE FILM.<\/span><\/strong> 10. BESSON HAS SHUT DOWN RUMORS THAT A SEQUEL IS IN THE WORKS.<\/span><\/strong> In an earlier interview with Cinema Blend, Besson elaborated on the topic, saying, \u201cNatalie is old now, she’s a mother \u2026 It’s too late. If I got an idea tomorrow about a sequel, of course I would do it. But I never came up with something strong enough. I don’t want to do sequels for money; I want to do a sequel because it’s worth it. I want it to be as good or better than the original.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tara Aquino\u00a0and Mental_Floss\u00a0present 11 Expert Facts About Leon: The Professional. \u00a0Here are three of my favorites… 1. NATALIE PORTMAN\u2019S PARENTS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,51,54,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-crime","category-movies","category-trivia","comments-off"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13551"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13553,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13551\/revisions\/13553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\nIt was an extremely complicated role for an 11-year-old: Not only would she have to deal with a broken home and violence, but she\u2019d also have to deal with the unwanted sexualization of a young girl. In Starting Young<\/em>, a documentary about Portman that\u2019s included on the 10th anniversary DVD edition of L\u00e9on<\/em>, the actress admits that after she read the script, she was so moved to tears by the film that she knew she had to have the role. Her parents weren\u2019t as convinced. \u201cMy parents were like, \u2018There is no way you\u2019re doing this movie. This is absolutely inappropriate for a child your age … and I was like, \u2018This is the greatest thing I\u2019ve ever read! You\u2019re gonna ruin my life!\u2019\u201d she shares in the doc. \u201c[I] was basically just fighting with them so much.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nAs per the agreement Portman\u2019s parents outlined with Besson, the actress was allowed five fake cigarettes in her hand during the entire film shoot, and she was never allowed to inhale a single one of them. If you pay close attention to her character, you’ll see that she only puts the cigarette to her lips, but never blows smoke out. Additionally, her parents demanded that her character quit smoking at some point in the movie. In the film, L\u00e9on scolds Mathilda for smoking, and later you see her throwing her unfinished cigarette away when she\u2019s alone.<\/p>\n
\nSo stop asking. During his press tour for Lucy<\/em>, Besson told The Guardian<\/em>, “You can’t imagine how many people ask me for a L\u00e9on <\/em>sequel. Everywhere I go they ask me. If I was motivated by money, I would have done it a long time ago. But I don’t feel it.”<\/p>\n