American Actress Natalie Portman

Natalie Portman born on June 9, 1981. She is an actress, film producer and film director with dual American and Israeli citizenship. Her first role was in the 1994 action thriller Leon: The Professional, opposite Jean Reno, but mainstream success came when she was cast as Padme Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (released in 1999, 2002 and 2005).

Born in Jerusalem to an Israeli father and American mother, Portman grew up in the eastern United States from the age of three. She studied dancing and acting in New York, and starred in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace while still at high school on Long Island. In 1999, Portman enrolled at Harvard University to study psychology, alongside her work as an actress; she completed a bachelor's degree in 2003. During her studies she starred in a second Star Wars film and opened in New York City's Public Theater production of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull in 2001.

Portman starred in the 2004 drama Closer, appeared in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith the following year, and won a Constellation Award for Best Female Performance and a Saturn Award for Best Actress for her starring role in the political thriller V for Vendetta (2006). She played leading roles in the historical dramas Goya's Ghosts (2006) and The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), and portrayed the love interest in Thor (2011) and its 2013 sequel. In 2010, Portman starred in the psychological horror film Black Swan. Her performance received widespread critical acclaim and she earned her first Academy Award for Best Actress, her second Golden Globe Award, the SAG Award, the BAFTA Award and the BFCA Award in 2011.

In May 2008, Portman served as the youngest member of the 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival jury. The same year she directed a segment of the collective film New York, I Love You. Her first feature film as a director, A Tale of Love and Darkness, was released in 2015.

Portman was born on June 9, 1981 in Jerusalem. Her original given name was Neta-Lee, a Hebrew name. She is the only child of Shelley (née Stevens), an American homemaker who works as Portman's agent, and Avner Hershlag, an Israeli fertility specialist and gynecologist.

Her maternal grandparents, Bernice (née Hurwitz; 1925–2014) and Arthur Stevens (whose family surname was originally Edelstein), were from Jewish families that moved to the United States from Austria and Russia. Natalie's paternal grandparents, Mania (née Portman) and Zvi Yehuda Hershlag, were Jewish immigrants to Israel. Zvi, born in Poland in 1914, moved to what was then Mandatory Palestine in 1938 and eventually became an economics professor; his parents died at Auschwitz. One of Natalie's paternal great-grandmothers was born in Romania and was a spy for British Intelligence 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. Portman, a dual citizen of the United States and Israel, has said that although she "really love[s] the States... my heart's in Jerusalem. That's where I feel at home."

Education:

While living in the Washington, D.C. area, Portman attended Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Maryland. Portman learned to speak Hebrew and while living on Long Island attended a Jewish elementary school, the Solomon Schechter Day School of Nassau County in Jericho, New York. She graduated from Syosset High School in Syosset, Long Island in 1999. She studied ballet and modern dance at the American Theater Dance Workshop in New Hyde Park, New York, and attended the Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts in Wheatley Heights, both on Long Island. Portman skipped the premiere of her film Star Wars Episode I. The Phantom Menace, so she could study for her high school final exams.

In 2003, Portman graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. degree in psychology. "I don't care if [college] ruins my career," she told the New York Post. "I'd rather be smart than a movie star." At Harvard, Portman was Alan Dershowitz's research assistant. While attending Harvard, she was a resident of Lowell House and wrote a letter to the Harvard Crimson in response to an essay critical of Israeli actions toward Palestinians.

Portman returned to Israel and took graduate courses at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the spring of 2004. In March 2006, she was 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.

 

Career (early life):

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."

On school holidays, Portman attended theater camps. When she was 10, Portman auditioned for the 1992 off-Broad way show Ruthless!, a musical about a girl who is prepared to commit murder to get the lead in a school play. Portman and future pop star Britney Spears were chosen as the understudies for star Laura Bell Bundy.

In 1993, she auditioned for the role of an orphan child who befriends a middle-aged Hitman (played by Jean Reno) in Luc Besson's film, Leon: The Professional. Soon after getting the part, she took her paternal grandmother's maiden name, "Portman", as her stage name in the interest of privacy and to protect her family's identity. Leon: The Professional opened in 1994, marking her feature film debut.