Before she was Padmé, Natalie Portman got her start acting in a rather controversial role in the 1994 action-drama Léon: The Professional. Portman, who was just 12 years old at the time, starred opposite Jean Reno as Mathilda, a 12-year-old orphan who gets taken in by the hitman next door.

Almost 30 years later, Portman admits she has “complicated” feelings about her role in the movie.

“It’s a movie that’s still beloved, and people come up to me about it more than almost anything I’ve ever made, and it gave me my career,” Portman told The Hollywood Reporter. “But it is definitely, when you watch it now, it definitely has some cringey, to say the least, aspects to it. So, yes, it’s complicated for me.”

In the movie, Mathilda gets taken in by her neighbor Léon, who is a professional hitman. As she trains under him, she begins to develop feelings and later confesses her love for him.

The tale has been compared multiple times to Lolita over the years, especially since the film includes a scene where she attempts to seductively perform “Like A Virgin” and “Happy Birthday (Mr. President.)” In another scene that was not released in the U.S., she even discusses wanting to lose her virginity to him.

It later came out that the film was allegedly inspired by director Luc Besson‘s relationship with child actress and filmmaker Maïwenn, who is credited in Léon as “Blond Babe.” They claim that he started seeing Maïwenn when she was 15 and he was in his 30s, though The Washington Post reports he met her when she was 12. The age of consent in France is 15.

“It was written while our story started. But no media made the link,” she said. Maïwenn and Besson share a daughter, whom she had when she was 16 years old.

In 2018, Besson faced multiple accusations of rape and sexual harassment from six women. Portman, who played a key role in building the Time’s Up movement, said the accusations were “devastating.”

“I really didn’t know. I was a kid working. I was a kid,” she told THR after admitting she was surprised by the accusations. “But I don’t want to say anything that would invalidate anyone’s experience.”

Despite the dark controversy surrounding the role that launched her career, Portman fondly recalled working as a child actress.

“It was fun. I definitely knew how to take things seriously as a kid, but I loved it,” she said. “I really, really loved it.”