LOS ANGELES — Natalie Portman and Jake Gyllenhaal may no longer be an item, but they continue to be fully paid-up members of the mutual admiration society.
Portman declared Gyllenhaal to be “the Cary Grant of our generation” at Sunday’s Screen Actors Guild Awards, an apparent response to the actor recently calling her “the Audrey Hepburn of our generation,” Access Hollywood reported Monday.
Gyllenhaal paid his former flame the compliment as he presented her with an award at January’s Palm Springs International Film Festival, adding that Portman was “elegant, graceful, has amazing eyebrows … is talented, really short, funny, smart, dedicated, incredibly kind.”
Speaking to Access Hollywood Sunday night, Portman was equally gushing in her praise for Gyllenhaal.
“Well, he’s the Cary Grant of our generation,” she said. “He’s so charismatic, and so dapper and smart. He’s wonderful.”
Gyllenhaal and Portman dated briefly in 2006.
Like Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, the pair has appeared together in one film, the 2009 war drama “Brothers.” Grant and Hepburn starred together in “Charade” in 1963, after which Grant remarked: “All I want for Christmas is another picture with Audrey Hepburn.”
Portman took home the SAG Award for outstanding performance by a female actor in a leading film role Sunday night for “Black Swan.”