Natalie Portman. The actress said she behaved like an “average everyday Jewish mother” on the set of her new film. Photo: wiki commons.

Actress Natalie Portman acted like a typical “Jewish mother” on the set of her latest movie, Jane Got a Gun, the Israeli-born star told the New York Post‘s Page Six on Sunday.

The 34-year-old, who also co-produced the western, said she made it her job to look out for everyone involved in the project, because the film has had to overcome “so many obstacles,” such as losing its director early on.

She explained: “Actors changed. We suffered financial and legal challenges. We endured so many replacements. There were delays. The weather was unforgiving…That’s why I, just basically your average everyday Jewish mother, would go around asking everyone, ‘You OK? You all right?'”

In the film, Portman plays lead character Jane Hammond, who asks a former lover for help in rescuing her outlaw husband from a murderous gang. Portman said she “knew nothing” about America’s Wild West before accepting the role, and that the script was something new for her.

“I’d never read anything like this feminist story about a woman in those old days, making her way in the unforgiving, tough Wild West,” she told Page Six. “Toting a rifle, husband riddled with bullets, shooting bad guys, baking bread, washing children, surviving…I know what it’s like to care for a baby. But to do that with the civilization’s surrounding toughness, to make that journey and survive it. That’s the story.”