Life of M by Rachel Cusk review – is this story of a film star based on Natalie Portman?

A teasing tale of the friendship between a writer and an actor explores the fallout from fame, and the blurring between pretence and reality M is a celebrated film actor. A star since childhood, now the face of a major fashion brand, she has been famous all her life. That her career closely resembles Natalie Portman’s has been gleefully seized upon by the press, something Rachel Cusk must surely have anticipated: in the novel, M’s first film has its sex scenes cut at her mother’s insistence, as…