{"id":24990,"date":"2025-12-02T10:48:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T16:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/?p=24990"},"modified":"2025-12-02T10:48:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T16:48:16","slug":"its-been-25-years-since-baylors-campus-was-featured-in-this-natalie-portman-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/2025\/12\/its-been-25-years-since-baylors-campus-was-featured-in-this-natalie-portman-film\/","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s been 25 years since Baylor&#8217;s campus was featured in this Natalie Portman film"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-24991\" style=\"display: none;\" src=\"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/where-heart-dec25.jpg\" alt=\"Natalie Portman and James Frain in a scene from Where the Heart Is, filmed on Baylor's campus\" width=\"600\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/where-heart-dec25.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/where-heart-dec25-300x150.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/where-heart-dec25-1024x512.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/where-heart-dec25-768x384.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>We almost let 2025 slip by without recognizing it as the 25th anniversary of a VERY important Baylor milestone&#8230; Yes, it has now been a quarter-century since <a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0198021\/\"><em>Where the Heart Is<\/em><\/a> was released in theaters, starring Baylor&#8217;s beautiful campus (and also Natalie Portman and Ashley Judd).<\/p>\n<p>If you weren&#8217;t a student at the time, this might be a little piece of BU trivia for you&#8230; But Baylor&#8217;s campus is very clearly the setting for the film&#8217;s climactic scene, in which (spoiler alert) Portman&#8217;s character confesses her love for her boyfriend, setting the stage for the pair to live happily ever after. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=31t8eDmC1BU\">Take a look for yourself<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Where the Heart Is (5\/5) Movie CLIP - I Lied (2000) HD\" width=\"768\" height=\"432\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/31t8eDmC1BU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Yes, that&#8217;s Carroll Science, Old Main and Burleson that are all quite recognizable as the camera swirls around the movie&#8217;s main characters. (Other scenes filmed in and around Pat Neff Hall and Armstrong Browning Library.) In the movie, Baylor stands in for real-life Bowdoin College, located in Maine. The scenes were shot during the summer of 1999, with Baylor students filling in as extras in the background.<\/p>\n<p>Co-producer Susan Cartsonis told <a href=\"https:\/\/digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com\/Documents\/Detail\/the-baylor-lariat-waco-texas-vol.-99-no.-1-wednesday-august-25-1999\/206638\"><em>The Baylor Lariat<\/em><\/a> that the studio chose to film at Baylor because &#8220;Baylor has the kind of old-fashioned brick buildings that are reminiscent of New England colleges, which is what we were trying to duplicate.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Baylor&#8217;s part in the film has become one of those unexpected campus moments, the kind that slips into conversation years later. It\u2019s not a major chapter in Baylor history, but it is a memorable one, and a reminder that even everyday corners of campus have stories tucked into them &#8212; some academic, some historic, and some just plain fun.<\/p>\n<p>Sic \u2019em, Bears!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We almost let 2025 slip by without recognizing it as the 25th anniversary of a VERY important Baylor milestone&#8230; Yes, it has now been a quarter-century since Where the Heart Is was released in theaters, starring Baylor&#8217;s beautiful campus (and also Natalie Portman and Ashley Judd). If you weren&#8217;t a student at the time, this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,10,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-just-for-fun","category-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24990\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}