Natalie Portman, נטלי פורטמן, born Natalie Hershlag; June 9, 1981 is an Israeli-American actress. Her first role was as an orphan taken in by a hitman in the 1994 French action film Léon (known in the United States as The Professional). During the 1990s, Portman had major roles in films like Beautiful Girls and Anywhere but Here, before being cast for the role as Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. In 1999, she enrolled at Harvard University to study psychology while she was working on the Star Wars films. She completed her bachelor's degree in 2003.
In 2001, Portman opened in New York City's Public Theater production of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, alongside Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. In 2005, Portman received an nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as well as winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture for the drama Closer. She shaved her head and learned to speak with an English accent for her starring role in V for Vendetta (2006), for which she won a Constellation Award for Best Female Performance, and a Saturn Award for Best Actress. She played leading roles in the historical dramas Goya's Ghosts (2006) and The Other Boleyn Girl (2008). In May 2008, she served as the youngest member of the 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival jury. Portman's directorial debut, Eve, opened the 65th Venice International Film Festival's shorts competition in 2008.
Early life
Portman was born in Jerusalem, Israel. Her father, Avner Hershlag, is an Israeli doctor specializing in fertility and reproduction (reproductive endocrinology). Her mother, Shelley Stevens, is an American homemaker who now works as her agent. Portman's maternal ancestors were Jewish immigrants from Austria and Russia, and her paternal ancestors were Jews who moved to Israel from Poland and Romania. Her paternal grandfather's parents died in Auschwitz, and her Romanian-born great-grandmother was a spy for the British during World War II.
Portman's parents met at a Jewish student center at Ohio State University, where her mother was selling tickets. They corresponded after her father returned to Israel, and were married when her mother visited a few years later. In 1984, when Portman was three years old, the family moved to the United States, where her father received his medical training. The family first lived in Washington, D.C., where Portman attended Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, but relocated to Connecticut in 1988, and then settled permanently in Long Island, New York, in 1990. She attended Syosset High School in Syosset, Long Island. Portman has said that although she "really love the States... my heart's in Jerusalem. That's where I feel at home." She is an only child and very close to her parents, who are often seen with her at her film premieres.
Education
Although she says her family was not religious, Portman learned to speak both Hebrew and English and attended a Jewish elementary school, the Solomon Schechter Day School of Glen Cove, New York. She graduated from the public Syosset High School in 1999. Portman skipped the premiere of Star Wars: Episode I so she could study for her high school final exams.
On June 5, 2003, Portman graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in psychology. "I don't care if college ruins my career," she told the New York Times, "I'd rather be smart than a movie star." At Harvard, Portman was Alan Dershowitz's research assistant (he thanks her in The Case for Israel) in a psychology lab. While attending Harvard, she was a resident of Lowell House and wrote a letter to the Harvard Crimson in response to an anti-Israeli essay.
Portman took graduate courses at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the spring of 2004. In March 2006, she appeared as a guest lecturer at a Columbia University course in terrorism and counterterrorism, where she spoke about her film V for Vendetta.
Portman has professed an interest in foreign languages since childhood and has studied French,Japanese, German, and Arabic.
As a student, Portman co-authored two research papers that were published in professional scientific journals. Her 1998 high school paper, "A Simple Method To Demonstrate the Enzymatic Production of Hydrogen from Sugar," was entered in the Intel Science Talent Search. In 2002, she contributed to a study on memory called "Frontal Lobe Activation During Object Permanence" during her psychology studies at Harvard.
Due to her scientific publications, Portman is among a very small number of professional actors with a defined Erdős–Bacon number, a concept which reflects the "small world phenomenon" in academia and entertainment by measuring the "collaborative distance" between that person and Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős—and the number of links, through roles in films, by which the individual is separated from American actor Kevin Bacon.
Career
Early work
Portman started dancing lessons at age four and performed in local troupes. At the age of 10, a Revlon agent asked her to become a child model, but she turned down the offer to focus on acting. In a magazine interview, Portman said that she was "different from the other kids. I was more ambitious, I knew what I liked and what I wanted, and I worked very hard. I was a very serious kid."
Portman spent her school holidays attending theater camps. When she was 10, she auditioned for Ruthless!, a play about a girl who is prepared to commit murder to get the lead in a school play, and she was chosen as the understudy for Laura Bell Bundy. In 1994, she auditioned for the role of a child who befriends a middle-aged hitman in Luc Besson's film, Léon (aka The Professional). Soon after getting the part, she took her grandmother's maiden name "Portman" as her stage name, in the interest of privacy; in the director's cut of the film on DVD, she is credited as Natalie Hershlag. Léon opened on November 18, 1994, marking her feature film debut at age 13. That same year she appeared in the short film Developing, which aired on television.
1995–1999
During the mid-1990s, Portman had roles in the films Heat, Everyone Says I Love You, and Mars Attacks!, as well as a major role in Beautiful Girls. She was the first choice to play Juliet in William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, but producers felt her age wasn't suitable. In 1997, Portman played the role of Anne Frank in a Broadway adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank.
She initially turned down the lead role in the film Anywhere but Here after learning it would involve a sex scene, but director Wayne Wang and actress Susan Sarandon demanded a rewrite of the script; Portman was shown a new draft, and she joined the project. The film opened in late 1999, and she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Ann August. Critic Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon called Portman "astonishing" and said that "like any number of actresses her age, she's neither too maudlin nor too plucky." In the late 1990s, Portman was cast as Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. The first part, The Phantom Menace, opened in early 1999. She then signed on to play the lead role of a teenaged mother in Where the Heart Is.
2000–2005
After filming Where the Heart Is, Portman moved into the dorms of Harvard University to pursue her bachelor's degree in psychology. She said in a 1999 interview that, with the exception of the Star Wars prequels, she would not act for the next four years in order to concentrate on studying. During the summer break from June to September 2000, Portman filmed Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones in Sydney, along with additional production in London.
In July 2001, Portman opened in New York City's Public Theater production of Chekhov's The Seagull, directed by Mike Nichols; she played the role of Nina alongside Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The play opened at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. That same year, she was one of many celebrities who made cameo appearances in the 2001 comedy Zoolander. Portman was cast in a small role in the film Cold Mountain alongside Jude Law and Nicole Kidman.
In 2004, Portman appeared in the independent movies Garden State and Closer. Garden State was an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival and won Best First Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards. Her performance as Alice in Closer earned her a Supporting Actress Golden Globe as well as a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
The final Star Wars prequel, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, was released on May 19, 2005. The film was the highest grossing domestic film of the year, and was voted Favorite Motion Picture at the People's Choice Awards. Also in 2005, Portman filmed Free Zone and director Miloš Forman's Goya's Ghosts. Forman had not seen any of her work but thought she looked like a Goya painting, so he requested a meeting.
2006–present
Portman appeared on Saturday Night Live on March 4, 2006, hosting the show with musical guest Fall Out Boy and special guest star Dennis Haysbert. In a SNL Digital Short, she portrays herself as an angry gangsta rapper (with Andy Samberg as her Flavor Flav-esque partner in Viking garb) during a faux-interview with Chris Parnell, saying she cheated at Harvard University while high on pot and cocaine. The song, titled "Natalie's Rap," was released – alongside other sketches from the show – in 2009 on Incredibad, an album by the Lonely Island. In another sketch, she portrays a student named Rebecca Hershlag (her actual surname) attending a Bar Mitzvah, and in an installment of the recurring sketch The Needlers (also known as Sally and Dan, The Couple That Should Be Divorced), plays a fertility specialist (her father's profession).
V for Vendetta opened in early 2006. Portman portrayed Evey Hammond, a young woman who is saved from the secret police by the main character, V. Portman worked with a voice coach for the role, learning to speak with an English accent, and she famously had her head shaved.
Portman has commented on V for Vendetta's political relevance and mentioned that her character, who joins an underground anti-government group, is "often bad and does things that you don't like" and that "being from Israel was a reason I wanted to do this because terrorism and violence are such a daily part of my conversations since I was little." She said the film "doesn't make clear good or bad statements. It respects the audience enough to take away their own opinion".
Both Goya's Ghosts and Free Zone received limited releases in 2006. Portman starred in the children's film Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, which began filming in April 2006 and was released in November 2007; she has said that she was "excited to do a kids' movie." In late 2006, Portman filmed The Other Boleyn Girl, a historical drama in which she plays Anne Boleyn; Eric Bana and Scarlett Johansson co-starred. She was named one of the hottest women of film and TV by Blender Magazine.
In 2006, she filmed Wong Kar-wai's road movie My Blueberry Nights. She won acclaim for her role as gambler Leslie, because "or once she's not playing a waif or a child princess but a mature, full-bodied woman... but she's not coasting on her looks... She uses her appeal to simultaneously flirt with and taunt the gambler across the table." Portman voiced Bart Simpson's girlfriend Darcy in the episode "Little Big Girl" of The Simpsons' 18th season.
She appeared in Paul McCartney's music video "Dance Tonight" from his 2007 album Memory Almost Full, directed by Michel Gondry. Portman co-starred in the Wes Anderson short film Hotel Chevalier, opposite Jason Schwartzman, in which she performed her second nude scene (her first being Goya's Ghosts). In May 2008, Portman served as the youngest member of the 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival jury, and in 2009, she starred opposite Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal in the drama film Brothers, a remake of the 2004 Danish film of the same name.
In 2008, Portman at age 27 made her directorial debut at the Venice Film Festival. "Eve", short movie about a young woman who is dragged along to her grandmother's romantic date, was screened out of competition. Portman said she had always had a fascination with the older generation and drew inspiration for character from her own grandmother.
Portman has been cast in the role of Jane Foster in Kenneth Branagh's upcoming film adaptation of Thor. She will also play a veteran ballerina in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan. Portman will produce and star as Elizabeth Bennet in the 2010 novel adaptation Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
Personal life
Portman, who has been a vegetarian since childhood and became a vegan in 2009 after reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, is an advocate for animal rights. She does not eat animal products or wear fur, feathers, or leather. "All of my shoes are from Target and Stella McCartney," she has said. In 2007, she launched her own brand of vegan footwear.
In 2007, Portman traveled to Rwanda with Jack Hanna, to film a documentary titled Gorillas on the Brink. Later, at a naming ceremony, Portman named a baby gorilla Gukina, which means "to play." Portman has been an advocate of environmental causes since childhood, when she joined an environmental song and dance troupe known as World Patrol Kids. She is also a member of the One Voice movement.
Portman was involved with the 2004 presidential campaign of Democratic candidate John Kerry and has supported antipoverty activities. In 2004 and 2005, she traveled to Uganda, Guatemala, and Ecuador as the Ambassador of Hope for FINCA International, an organization that promotes micro-lending to help finance women-owned businesses in poor countries. In an interview conducted backstage at the Live 8 concert in Philadelphia and appearing on the PBS program Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria, she discussed microfinance. Host Fareed Zakaria said that he was "generally wary of celebrities with fashionable causes," but included the segment with Portman because "she really knew her stuff."
In the "Voices" segment of the April 29, 2007, episode of the ABC Sunday Morning Program This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Portman discussed her work with FINCA and how it can benefit women and children in Third World countries. In fall 2007, Portman visited several university campuses, including Harvard, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Stanford, Princeton, New York University, and Columbia, to inspire students with the power of microfinance and to encourage them to join the Village Banking Campaign to help families and communities lift themselves out of poverty.
In 2010, Portman's activist work and popularity with young people earned her a nomination for VH1's Do Something Awards, which is dedicated to honoring individuals who do good and is powered by Do Something, an organization that aims to empower, celebrate, and inspire young people.
Politically, Portman is a supporter of the Democrats, and in the 2004 presidential race she campaigned for Democratic nominee, Senator John Kerry. In the 2008 presidential election, Portman supported Senator Hillary Clinton of New York in the Democratic primaries. She later campaigned for eventual Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, during the general election. However, she also says that she likes Republican nominee Senator John McCain of Arizona, whom she regards as "a very moral person".
On the concept of the afterlife, she comments: "I don't believe in that. I believe this is it, and I believe it's the best way to live." She has said that she feels more Jewish in Israel and that she would like to raise her children in the Jewish religion: "A priority for me is definitely that I'd like to raise my kids Jewish, but the ultimate thing is to have someone who is a good person and who is a partner."
In the May 2002 issue of Vogue, Portman called actor/musician Lukas Haas and musician Moby her close friends. After starring in the video for his song "Carmensita," she began a relationship with American folk singer Devendra Banhart that ended in September 2008. She began dating ballet dancer Benjamin Millepied in 2009 after they met on the set of Portman's film Black Swan, for which Millepied acted as choreographer.
Filmography
Film and television
Year Title Role Notes
1994 Léon Mathilda (aka The Professional)
"Developing" Nina 23-minute short film
1995 Heat Lauren Gustafson
1996 Beautiful Girls Marty Nominated—Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress
Nominated—Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Most Promising Actress
Everyone Says I Love You Laura Dandridge Nominated—Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Most Promising Actress
Mars Attacks! Taffy Dale Nominated—Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Most Promising Actress
1999 Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace Padmé Amidala
Anywhere but Here Ann August Nominated---Golden Globe Award - Best Supporting Actress
2000 Where the Heart Is Novalee Nation
2001 Zoolander Herself cameo
2002 Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones Padmé Amidala
2003 Cold Mountain Sara
2004 Garden State Samantha Nominated—Satellite Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
Closer Alice Ayres/Jane Jones Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture
San Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actress
Nominated—Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Nominated—BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Nominated—Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress
Nominated—London Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress
Nominated—Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actress
Nominated—Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
2005 Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith Padmé Amidala
Free Zone Rebecca received a limited US theatrical release in April 2006
2006 V for Vendetta Evey Hammond Saturn Award for Best Actress
Paris, je t'aime Francine Ensemble film with 22 segments. She appears in the segment directed by German writer-director Tom Tykwer.
Goya's Ghosts Ines Bilbatua & Alicia
2007 My Blueberry Nights Leslie
The Darjeeling Limited Jack's Ex-Girlfriend
"Hotel Chevalier" Jack's Ex-Girlfriend 13-minute short companion piece to The Darjeeling Limited
Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium Molly Mahoney
2008 The Other Boleyn Girl Anne Boleyn
2009 New York, I Love You Rifka
Brothers Grace Cahill Nominated—Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress
Nominated—Saturn Award for Best Actress
2010 Love and Other Impossible Pursuits Emilia Greenleaf
Hesher Nicole post-production
Black Swan Nina post-production
2011 Your Highness Isabel post-production
Thor Jane Foster post-production
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