Natalie Portman has been dissecting her own experiences of sexism and sexual harassment in Hollywood following the onslaught of allegations emerging from the industry.

The 36-year-old actress said that at first she felt lucky that she had never been the victim of assault or abuse, but on further reflection she realised she had endured "discrimination and harassment" on almost every project she's ever worked on.

"When I heard everything coming out, I was like, wow, I’m so lucky that I haven’t had this," Portman said during a discussion at Vulture Festival L.A.

"And then, on reflection, I was like, okay, definitely never been assaulted, definitely not, but I’ve had discrimination or harassment on almost everything I’ve ever worked on in some way.

"I went from thinking I don't have a story to thinking, Oh wait, I have 100 stories.

"And I think a lot of people are having these reckonings with themselves, of things that we just took for granted as like, this is part of the process."

The Jackie star went on to recall an inappropriate encounter with a producer who had invited her to fly with him and his company to a place she was going.

"I showed up and it was just the two of us, and one bed was made on the plane. Nothing happened, I was not assaulted," she recounted.

"I said: 'This doesn’t make me feel comfortable,' and that was respected.

"But that was super not okay, you know? That was really unacceptable and manipulative and could have been - I was scared, you know?

"But just the fact of any woman, if you're walking down the street alone at night, you feel scared, and I’m not sure guys know what that [feels like]."

Portman went on to reveal that she also turned down roles which entailed kissing or sexual scenes when she was younger because she had already been seedily described as "a Lolita" by the press, which had made her feel objectified and "scared".

Natalie Portman at the Sag Awardspinterest
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Natalie Portman at the 2017 Sag Awards

Portman made her film debut aged 12 in 1994's Leon.

"There was definitely a period where I was reluctant to do any kind of kissing scenes, sexual scenes," Portman explained. "Because [for] my first roles, the reaction people would [give] in reviews [was to] call me a Lolita and things like that, and I got so scared by it.

"And I think that’s also got to be part of our conversation now: When you’re defensive as a woman against being looked at that way, that you’re like, ‘I don’t want to’ — what do we close off of ourselves or diminish in ourselves because we want to protect ourselves?"

Portman also reflected on how the industry is completely male-dominated, and how she's usually one of the few women on set.

She wondered whether this in part was perhaps a way of keeping women away from other women so they couldn't share their experiences of discrimination or harassment in the industry.

"The surprising thing is it almost feels strategic to keep you away from other women, because you don’t have the opportunity to share stories," she ruminated.

"All these accusations are like, 'Oh yeah, everyone was isolated from each other,' people didn’t share. They didn’t realise that there were hundreds of people with similar stories."

And while she praised her previous male directors Jackie's Pablo Larraín, Black Swan's Darren Aronofsky and Closer's Mike Nichols for treating her as an equal, she's had a director shout at her for being "exhausting" when she's tried to share an opinion.

"I was like, 'I’m exhausting for telling you my opinion about my job?' And it was completely different with male actors next to me in the same room," she added.

"To the point where one of the male actors I was working with stood up for me in that meeting, because he said, ‘You know, you’re completely not listening to her and you’re completely listening to me and we’re saying almost the same thing.'"