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Natalie Portman
(1981- )Natalie Hershlag was born on June 9, 1981, in Jerusalem, Israel and her first language was Hebrew, which she still speaks fluently. To protect her privacy as a minor, she adopted the name Portman, her grandmother's maiden name, as her stage name. Her mother, Shelley, is a full-time homemaker, from Cincinnati, Ohio, and her father, Avner, is an infertility specialist from Israel. When she was three, her family moved to the United States because her father did his residency in Maryland. At seven, her father received a fellowship and the family moved to Connecticut. Two years later, they settled in Long Island, New York. Portman is an only child who became a vegetarian at age eight when she witnessed doctors demonstrating laser surgery on a chicken at a medical conference with her father. When she was 10, Portman went to a pizza parlor and was approached by a scout from Revlon who asked her if she wanted to model for the company. She said that she would rather try acting and got an agent. Her parents wouldn't let her work during school, so she spent summers at theatre camps gaining experience playing such roles as Dream Laurey in Oklahoma! and Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream. She made her professional performance in the off-Broadway musical Ruthless as an understudy for three weeks in 1993. At age12, she got her first movie role in The Professional, a violent tale of a lonely hit man who befirends a desparate young girl that was filmed in New York and France and released in the USA in November 1994. Director Luc Besson had to negotiate with Portman’s parents who wanted to make sure that she did not do anything that was inappropriate for her age or might her career and personal life. That concern led her to turn down roles in movies such as Lolita, due to her feeling that young actors should not be exposed to sex at such a young age, and the role of Juliet in William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, because of the age difference between her and Leonardo DiCaprio. By age 14, Portman was busy working on a series of films, including Heat, Beautiful Girls, Everyone Says I Love You, and Mars Attacks! While filming in France, Portman read the Diary of Anne Frank and visited the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam, which had a tremendous impact on her and led her to eventually reject a supporting role in The Horse Whisperer and decide instead to make her Broadway debut as Anne Frank in The Dairy of Anne Frank. She told Parade that “Anne Frank's faith in humanity, even when she was starving and sick, had a huge impact on me.” It also reminded her of her family’s history: her grandfather moved to Palestine from Poland in the 1930s, expecting his family to follow, but his parents were sent to Auschwitz. After the play, Portman made what amounted to a ten-year commitment to star as Queen Amidala in the Star Wars prequels (Episodes I, II and III). Not surprisingly, starring in one of the most anticipated movies in history instantly catapulted Portman into the limelight. She told the Calgary Sun (5/1999) “The thing I feared most has begun to happen. People are becoming too interested in me as a person and not me as an actress. I have purposely tried to keep my personal life out of the public domain, but it's getting harder with each passing week.” In another interview, she focused on more of the positive impact of the role: “Professionally, participation in a success increases your commercial value. From now on, I am a product that allows a movie to be more easily sold. It's in particular thanks to that that I could make an independent film this summer: it found its financing when I accepted the role. Personally, the success of Star Wars modified the nature of my public, of my fans. Now, I interest more kids of 10-12 years than men of ripe age and, frankly, I prefer that” (La Libre Belgique 2/2000). In 1999, at 17 she graduated with honors from Syosset High School, on Long Island, New York, and went on to study at Harvard where she majored in psychology. She acted during her breaks, appearing in Cold Mountain and Garden State. When the Harvard Crimson ran an op-ed article labeling Israel “racist,” Portman wrote a rebuttal that said “Israelis and Arabs are historically cousins. Until we accept the fact that we are constituents of the same family, we will blunder in believing that a loss for one ‘side’ is not a loss for all humankind.” In addition to her film career, Portman served as the Ambassador of Hope with The Foundation for International Community Assistance, an organization that provides small loans to women in Third World countries so they can start their own businesses. She lives near her parents’ house in Syosset, New York. Filmography 1994 Léon (The Professional) — Mathilda Sources: Natalieportman.com; Parade, (November 28, 2004); IMDB; Photo Natalieportman.com |
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