"I am very excited to spend time here," said Natalie Portman at the press-conference in Berlin on the 7th of March. "I have only been here for two days and have been working a lot so I haven’t had a chance too see anything substantial although I have had two very good restaurant experiences so far. Weird German food I don’t know about because I’m vegetarian, so it’s sort of limited to how weird I can get, but anything that is vegetarian I am willing to try. Otherwise I am really looking forward to checking out the city, it has such an incredible history and all the people I’ve met here have been really, really, really wonderful, so I’m looking forward to spending time here."

The Wachowski Brothers and Joel Silver, the people that brought you "The Matrix", are in town to make a film out of Alan Moore’s and David Lloyd’s comic book, V FOR VENDETTA. The director is James McTeigue and the main characters are played by Natalie Portmann and James Purefoy, who might be the new James Bond. V FOR VENDETTA is sort of based on the Guy Fawkes November 5th gunpowder plot. The nazis won the war, England has a fascist regime and the masked terrorist V is the only hero out there. It's one of the best comicbooks ever written and influenced a whole generation of writers. But why does Hollywood like the studios in Babelsberg so much? Maybe it's because of the state funding for movies they can get in Berlin-Brandenburg. "We’ve had cooperation at all levels really," said producer grant Hill. "From the first time we came here to Babelsberg we've been helped through the process. We’ve had application to and been successful with the media board [Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg], we were given a subsidy of 635,000 Euros [approximately US$840,000] and we also have an application with the federal people. We were a film that was in a sense like a lot of these films, looking for a home at one point, we had looked at other options, Babelsberg became available, and a deal was put together that worked very well for us and with the aid of all the tradespeople here it has been fantastic." So, everyone has a good time and the actors enjoy their stay in big, bad Berlin. Hollywoodstars eating pizza in Kreuzberg! "I think it’s very important to have an apartment, said James Purefoy. "You go to make a movie in a city and you’re there for a long time, don’t stay in hotel. You can stay in hotels that feel like every other hotel in the world. It is very important to stay in an apartment so that you can involve yourself with your local community there."

V FOR VENDETTA - The official site is open