Natalie Portman

Natalie Portman, born Natalie Hershlag on June 9, 1981, in Jerusalem, holds dual citizenship in Israel and the United States. She works as an actress, producer, and director, and has built a long screen career starting in her teens. Her filmography includes both major blockbusters and smaller independent projects, and she has won an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and two Golden Globes.

Portman’s family moved to the U.S. when she was three. She began acting at age twelve, playing a young girl taken in by a hitman in *Léon: The Professional* (1994). While still in high school, she appeared on Broadway in *The Diary of Anne Frank* (1997) and became widely known for her role as Padmé Amidala in *Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace* (1999). Between 1999 and 2003, she attended Harvard University and earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology. During those years, she took fewer acting jobs but continued with the *Star Wars* prequel trilogy (2002, 2005) and performed in a 2001 revival of *The Seagull* at The Public Theater.

Her career picked up in 2004 when she won a Golden Globe and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for *Closer*. She then played Evey Hammond in *V for Vendetta* (2005), Anne Boleyn in *The Other Boleyn Girl* (2008), and a troubled ballerina in *Black Swan* (2010), which earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress. Later roles include the romantic comedy *No Strings Attached* (2011) and portraying Jacqueline Kennedy in *Jackie* (2016), which brought her a third Oscar nomination. She also became a key figure in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Jane Foster in *Thor* (2011), *Thor: The Dark World* (2013), and *Thor: Love and Thunder* (2022), making her one of the highest-paid actresses in the world.

Portman directed the short film *Eve* (2008) and the biographical drama *A Tale of Love and Darkness* (2015), in which she also starred. In 2021, she co-founded the production company MountainA, which produced and starred her in *May December* (2023) and the miniseries *Lady in the Lake* (2024). She advocates for women’s rights, environmental issues, and animal welfare, supporting groups like the Human Rights Foundation and the Jane Goodall Institute.

**Early life** Portman was born Natalie Hershlag at Hadassah Medical Center in Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, to Jewish parents. Her mother, Shelley Stevens, is an artist from Ohio, and her father, Avner Hershlag, is a gynecologist born in Israel. Her maternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Russia and Austria who settled in the U.S., while her paternal grandparents emigrated from Poland to the land of Israel/Palestine in the late 1930s. Her grandfather led a Jewish youth movement in Poland and went to Palestine expecting to send for his family later, but they were killed in Auschwitz. Her paternal grandmother, originally from Romania, worked as a British spy during World War II. Portman holds dual Israeli and American citizenship.

When she was three, her family moved to the U.S., first living in Washington, D.C., then relocating to Connecticut in 1988, and finally settling in Syosset, Long Island. In Washington, she attended Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Maryland. Her native language is Hebrew. On Long Island, she went to the Solomon Schechter Day School of Nassau County. She studied ballet and modern dance at the American Theater Dance Workshop and regularly attended the Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts. Portman has described herself as “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.”

At age ten, a Revlon agent spotted her at a pizza restaurant and offered her a modeling job. She declined but used the opportunity to get an acting agent. She auditioned for the 1992 off-Broadway musical *Ruthless!*, about a girl willing to commit murder to get the lead in a school play. Portman and Britney Spears were chosen as understudies for star Laura Bell Bundy.

**Career** **1994–1998: Early work** Six months after *Ruthless!* ended, Portman auditioned for and got the lead in Luc Besson’s action drama *Léon: The Professional* (1994). She took her paternal grandmother’s maiden name, Portman, as her stage name. She played Mathilda, an orphan who befriends a middle-aged hitman (Jean Reno). Her parents were hesitant about the role because of the script’s explicit sexual and violent content, but agreed after Besson removed the character’s nudity and killings she committed. Portman said she found nothing objectionable after those scenes were cut. Still, her mother was unhappy with some “sexual twists and turns” in the finished film that weren’t in the script. Hal Hinson of *The Washington Post* praised Portman for bringing a “genuine sense of tragedy” to the part, while Peter Rainer of the *Los Angeles Times* felt she wasn’t “enough of an actress to unfold Mathilda’s pain” and criticized Besson’s sexualization of the character.

After *The Professional*, Portman returned to school. During summer break in 1994, she filmed a part in Marya Cohn’s short film *Developing*, playing a young girl dealing with her mother’s cancer (Frances Conroy). She also attended the Stagedoor Manor performing arts camp, where she played Anne Shirley in a staging of *Anne of Green Gables*. Michael Mann offered her the small role of the suicidal stepdaughter of Al Pacino’s character in the action film *Heat* (1995).