Natalie Portman talks about her involvement with Superman, Batman and Cloud Atlas

Lovely actress Natalie Portman always seems to have full schedule appearing in, producing or even writing movies. But she also finds her name associated with projects that may or may not carry truth.

In the latest issue, EW chatted with the BLACK SWAN star and slowed down the rumor wheel.

Is it possible she’ll star as Lois Lane in SUPERMAN: MAN OF STEEL? “No, I haven’t heard anything.”

Okay, one DC hero down. How about the speculation that she’ll be a potential love interest in THE DARK KNIGHT RISES? “Oh, I don’t know anything about that.“

Any truth to her wanting to play rebellious hacker Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher’s version of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO? “They called me to read for it, but I didn’t.“

Hmm, a trend develops. Okay, she’s also been linked to the ambitious sci-fi project CLOUD ATLAS — Halle Berry even mentioned that she, Portman and Tom Hanks were making it with the Wachowskis (although RUN LOLA RUN director Tom Tykwer had also previously been involved). What’s the status on that?

“I don’t know what’s going on with financing,” Portman says of the planned $80 million adaptation of David Mitchell’s novel. “I read it while I was doing V FOR VENDETTA and I gave it to the Wachowskis and to Tom Tykwer. Now they’re directing it together, the three of them. I will have some acting role in it if it happens, but probably nothing major.”

Three directors on one movie? Well, the book involves multiple characters across different time frames, so perhaps they’re individually handling separate portions? Or perhaps just together trying to unravel the story — here’s a (somewhat dizzying) description of the book: “Mitchell’s virtuosic novel presents six narratives that evoke an array of genres, from Melvillean high-seas drama to California noir and dystopian fantasy. There is a naïve clerk on a nineteenth-century Polynesian voyage; an aspiring composer who insinuates himself into the home of a syphilitic genius; a journalist investigating a nuclear plant; a publisher with a dangerous best-seller on his hands; and a cloned human being created for slave labor. These five stories are bisected and arranged around a sixth, the oral history of a post-apocalyptic island, which forms the heart of the novel. Only after this do the second halves of the stories fall into place, pulling the novel’s themes into focus: the ease with which one group enslaves another, and the constant rewriting of the past by those who control the present.”