The phrase “portrays as” is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when you want to describe something or someone in a certain way. For example: The movie portrays John as an ambitious businessman.
He spent his last years with a woman Kanfer portrays as greedy, bullying and sexually taunting: Minnie squared.
It was Ms. Harman, whom the book portrays as gentle but fascinated with death, who started photographing detainees at Abu Ghraib, including one who didn't survive his interrogation.
Chekhov's "Cherry Orchard" portrays as stingingly as any work of literature how patterns of family wealth often play out in the modern world.
The press makes hay over what it portrays as sleaze and trickery.
Hart was in thrall to his therapists, whom Bach portrays as fame-seeking quacks.
Think derivatives, which he portrays as dangerous weapons wielded by lesser beings.
Trump, for his part, brags about what he portrays as a storied career in public corruption.
In "Puppetmaster," by Anita Kunz, an immense, cackling, diapered infant dwarfs his mother, whom the artist portrays as a marionette.
He never lets up on Mr. Starr, whom he portrays as bouncing from one failed gambit to the next.
The card coincided with Wilker's transition from what he portrays as an idyllic childhood to a complicated adolescence.
This approach is suited to his brothel series and the series of his ex-girlfriend Tulla Larsen, whom he portrays as a murderess.
