New York: In Lucy in the Sky, Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman plays an astronaut struggling to return to the mundanity of everyday life after she went to space for the first time.
Though Portman and co-star Jon Hamm haven't been outside of Earth's atmosphere, the duo said they could relate to the main character's experience, based loosely on the real-life story of a NASA astronaut convicted of burglary and battery after confronting a romantic rival in 2007.
The film strays significantly from the real-life events and asks a bigger question: What happens to astronauts after they return to space? For some, a return to normalcy can be impossible and relationships can suffer.
Though many movies have been made about space travel, that question had never occurred to Portman.
"(But) it makes total sense that after having this kind of incredibly life-changing wonder experience of seeing the galaxy from off our planet, seeing our planet from far away, that it would completely change the way you see the world and that it would be hard to recapture that kind of adrenaline of that experience," she said.
Hamm likened it to the life of first responders, people returning from war, and to a lesser degree, his time shooting Mad Men for which he would be on for six months and then off for six months.
With Noah Hawley making his debut as a director, Lucy in the Sky is bankrolled by Reese Witherspoon, Bruna Papandrea and John Cameron.
