A BEAUTIFUL MIND Portman

While shooting Goyas Ghosts, the Milos Forman film about the Spanish Inquisition that opens July 20, porcelain doll Natalie Portman made her costar, Javier Bardem, feel like an ass—in a good way.

"I guess she was very young when she became famous, but her mind is perfectly structured. She's so intelligent it's scary. When I was talking to her, I didn't know what to talk about because she knows a lot of things," Bardem told Radar in New York yesterday at a press event for the film. "I felt like a donkey."

When a reporter asked Bardem if it was Natalie Portman's buttocks he gropes in the movie or those of a body double, Bardem replied, "I don't remember." Pressed, he dodged. "I can't answer that. She's the one who has to answer that."

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