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Natalie Portman
was born on June 9, 1981
in Jerusalem, Israel,
the only child of an Israeli father,
a physician and infertility specialist
and her American mother,
a housewife and artist.
Her family moved to Washington DC
when she was three ~ to Connecticut
when she was seven and finally
to Long Island, New York
when she was nine, where they reside today.
Portman is not Natalie�s real name
since she elected to use a stage name
for the sake of privacy
and her grandmother�s maiden name,
Portman, seemed an appropriate choice.
Natalie stands 5 feet 4 inches tall
and weighs 104 pounds.
Natalie�s eyes are brown
and her hair is brown.
Natalie�s parents are very protective,
and yet she seems most capable
of watching out for herself.
Natalie doesn�t smoke
or drink alcohol
and she�s a vegetarian.
Natalie explains it simply,
"I don't want to hurt myself.�
Natalie likes ballet, dancing, reading,
writing, acting, ice skating
and hanging out with her friends
and her pet dog, Noodles,
half Poodle and half Schnauzer.
Her favorite music includes
Bjork, PJ Harvey, Juliana Hatfield,
Alannis Morissette and The Jackson 5.
Natalie�s favorite actor is Ben Kingsley
and her favorite TV shows are
Ellen and Friends.
There are many actors and actresses
out there who have good looks
and do a good job at acting.
So what makes Natalie Portman so special?
Natalie Portman fans will all agree
that she is a very intelligent person.
Most young actors and actresses
probably attend exclusive private schools,
but Natalie chose to attend public schools,
where she was a straight A student.
HIGH SCHOOL
CLASS OF 1999
Natalie, a straight-A student,
scored a 1400 on her SAT exams
and has been accepted
at both Harvard and Yale.
Natalie loves languages
and is fluent in Hebrew and French.
Biology is her favorite subject
so she has considered becoming a doctor
or she might like to have a subsistence farm
when she grows up, where she can be
surrounded by a really great family
with lots of kids and lots of animals.
"I'm a Gemini," she explains brightly.
"so I change my mind every day."
She insists that acting is something
she simply lucked into, but that
it was not her vocation.
"I'm not sure that once I'm out of school
I'll be able to act anymore, " she said.
"I have this amazing relationship
with acting right now, because I can go
back to my life and be a normal person."
Ah, but what is normal?
Normal is kind of a trick word,
since it describes the way things are,
but also the way things should be.
Above all, this talented teenager
may want a normal life,
but she does not want to be
a normal person, per s�.
"I wouldn't wish that on anyone," she says,
"because it has kind of become synonymous
with being ordinary ~ unextraordinary."
Natalie Portman has nothing to worry about
because all of this is coming from a young actress
who can forgo any college degree and make
millions on her acting career right now.
As impressive as it may seem,
she is very humble
about her acting accomplishments.
Her interest in acting had been evident
early during her childhood, and was
enhanced by her early acting experience
at The Usdan Theater Arts Camp
where she was chosen to play
the dumb blonde, Dora, in Fiorello
and the early feminist Annie Oakley
in Annie get your Gun.
Natalie was discovered in a pizza parlor
in Long Island, New York at age eleven
by a modeling agent from Revlon.
The agents wanted Natalie to model,
but she wanted to go with acting.
They finally acquiesced and introduced her
to reputable acting agent friends
who got her auditions.
She would eventually model as well,
starring in Isaac Mizrahi's ad campaign
for his Isaac Line of clothing.
Like the teenager she is,
one moment Natalie is gushing,
"I think I became an actress
just so there would be a possibility
that I might meet Patrick Swayze one day,
'cause he's just, like, so amazing!"
The next minute she is pondering
the implications of class distinctions
in Great Britain and America.
Already, this sort of wide-eyed precocity
has become a Natalie Portman trademark.
Natalie's debut in feature films came in 1994,
with the release of Luc Besson's blockbuster
The Professional,
also known as Leon,
which was an excellent movie
that showcased her acting ability
as a young starlet.
Selected from thousands
auditioning for the role,
twelve year old Natalie played
the twelve year old Matilda,
a girl whose family has been murdered
by renegade policemen
and she looks to her neighbor,
an infamous hitman
to protect her.
Theirs is a story of love and violence
between a hitman, an orphan
and the corrupt world that engulfs them.
The film also starred
the well established French actor,
Jean Reno as the hitman, Leon
and the intense Gary Oldman
as the psychotic, pill popping,
villainous, renegade police detective
bent on killing her.
Disastrous test screening
at a showing in Los Angeles,
caused over twenty minutes
of integral footage to be tragically cut
from the version of the film
that was edited to suit
the prohibitive sensitivities
of American audiences.
In essence, a bittersweet happy ending
makes the struggles Leon and Matilda faced
well worth the tremendous odds
they fought their best to overcome.
The love between them blossomed
and ultimately became their strength
and their right to experience
all the tenderness and devotion possible
for any genetic father and daughter,
let alone strangers thrown together
by extraordinary circumstances.
Two underdogs against the odds
~ who were at a crucial bottom line ~
~ one tragic, last moment of truth ~
and managed to maintain and protect
a beautiful bond that no one else on earth
could touch, threaten or destroy ~
their unconditional love for each other.
Natalie�s performance
earned for her a nomination for
~ Best Actress In Drama ~
in the Young Star Awards competition
sponsored by The Hollywood Reporter.
Natalie's innocence
is precisely what dazzles people,
disarming everyone
and everything in its path.
Broadway director James Lapine saw this
when he cast her in the title role
in his new production of
The Diary of Anne Frank
that opened at Broadway's
Music Box theater.
Natalie played the role
of Anne Frank during 1998
performing the play eight times a week
while attending public high school
~ a truly amazing accomplishment.
Her performance as Anne was outstanding,
and the overall play proved to be
remarkably moving and powerful.
"She has a magnetic quality,
the same that one imagines that
Anne Frank would have had," Lapine notes.
"What Natalie has is real emotional presence
and intelligence. Boy, is she smart."
Natalie was an honor student
who worried about how she would juggle
appearing nightly on Broadway
with the demands of her
all important Junior year of high school,
filled with SATs and college decisions.
Portman felt a deep girl-to-girl connection
with the German-Jewish teenager
who spent two years hiding in a secret annex
to escape Nazi persecution, and she had been
looking for a chance to play the role.
Natalie was twelve when she first read
Anne Frank: The Diary Of A Young Girl.
Natalie said the stage experience
of playing Anne Frank,
who perished in the Holocaust,
will remain imprinted in her mind
for a long time.
"One of the most painful things for me
is that often, at the end of the show,
I see a little kid in one of the front rows
just crying uncontrollably," Natalie said.
"The more I lived with it every day,
the more I realized there is no way
I could feel what the real people felt,
no way I can convey what they went through.
It's something no one can fathom
unless they actually lived through it
and the part is so emotionally draining."
"Of course there is, in the play,
a lot of light moments and laughter," she added.
"But the audience is reluctant to laugh.
"I thought I was Anne Frank for a while.
Obviously I've never experienced
to any extent what she went through,
but that's not what the book is about.
That's the amazing thing.
If I were locked up in an attic for years,
my diary would be all about
how miserable I was, and she's just writing
about playing and boys and clothes.
I think that when you never expect
anyone to read your diary, you're so honest,
and that's what I love about it
~ that she's not embarrassed to talk
about how selfish she is, and how vain,
because she doesn't think
anyone is going to read it."
Natalie had to drop out of Robert Redford's film
The Horse Whisperer
because of prolonged production delays
that led to a conflict with her commitment
to The Dairy of Anne Frank production.
She was cast in the record breaking
Star Wars: Episode I ~ The Phantom Menace,
but she declined the part at the time,
because it too conflicted with her role
in The Diary of Anne Frank production.
George Lucas quickly rescheduled
his shooting schedule
to accommodate Natalie's schedule
so she would be able to play the role
of Queen Amidala of Naboo,
the future mother of the heroic twins,
Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker.
A prodigious actress, Natalie Portman
completed the principal photography
for this project in the summer of 1997
and according to Natalie, she will star
in the two subsequent prequel episodes
due out in 2002 and 2005, respectively.
The stars she acts with show their sincere
appreciation of this young and talented actress.
"Natalie has an innate grace," Susan Sarandon said,
"that you just don't find in her generation.
She corners the market on it."
Natalie has always seen her acting
as a hobby and she is not sure
whether she will continue to act
in the future.
She is determined to go to college
and whatever happens from there on
is mere speculation.
Natalie Portman has been called
the premiere actress of her generation.
When it comes to youth,
there are some who are disaffected
and some who are unaffected.
As soon as you meet Natalie Portman,
this nineteen year-old actress,
who has played some of the oldest little girls
that audiences have seen since Jodie Foster
hit the big screen, you sense right away
Natalie is one unaffected by her success.
Natalie has been liberated
from the arduous filming of George Lucas'
eagerly anticipated Star Wars prequel,
in which she plays the young Queen Amidala
and she is like a kid playing hooky.
Natalie said she was not too
intimidated playing the Star Wars role.
"Because I was born in Israel
~ my father is an Israeli ~
Star Wars wasn't as iconic as it was in most
American households," she explained.
"It's not as rooted in me personally
as it is with a lot of American teenagers.
My friends made me realize
what a big deal it was."
It is interesting to learn that a series of films
Natalie was considered for include ~
Natalie being orginally cast as Juliet
in William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet.
She was only thirteen at the time
while Leonardo DiCaprio was twenty-one
and the producers of the film decided
that an older actress was more appropriate
and the fifteen year old Claire Danes
was chosen instead.
When Luc Besson planned to film
The Fifth Element, he had Natalie in mind
for the role of Leeloo, which was eventually
played by Milla Jovovich.
Once again, Natalie's young age presented problems
for the romantic elements of the story.
Finally, Natalie turned down
the role of Wendy Hood that went to
Christina Ricci in Ang Lee's The Ice Storm
and the title role in Adrian Lyne's Lolita,
which would later star Dominique Swain
as Jeremy Iron's love interest.
Natalie refused to play these roles
based on her personal, moral,
and philosophical beliefs
against the exploitation of children.
Natalie went on to work with directors
like Woody Allen, Michael Mann
and Tim Burton.
Her best performance came in the 1996
Ted Demme film, Beautiful Girls
in which Natalie played Marty,
the local Lolita to Timothy Hutton.
Many major film critics agreed
that her performance was worthy
of an Academy Award nomination.
"It was like nothing I've ever done before,"
Natalie said of her Star Wars experience,
in which she portrays the 14-year-old ruler
of Planet Naboo ~ not to mention the future
mother of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia.
At age seventeen, Natalie had already starred
on Broadway, had her face splashed across
the cover of national magazines and had been
compared to a young Audrey Hepburn,
but Natalie took it all in stride.
"I just do my job, I guess," she said.
"I don't ever think I'm a star.
I'm just an actress."
People who work with Natalie say that
she is not just any actress.
"She has a wisdom beyond her years,"
said Anne Frank co-star Linda Lavin.
"She is so mature. She can handle anything."
"Some of my roles have been a bit dark
and rebellious, but I'd rather do that than
make a kids' movie," she said. "I'd do one
if it was realistic and not stupid,
but I don't think many today are."
Sean Ferrer, Audrey Hepburn�s son,
maintains that Natalie Portman
is the only woman who captures
his mother's elegant persona.
Natalie was invited to attend
a party on 4 May 1999
in honor of Audrey's 70th birthday.
Sean Ferrer, actor and producer,
has been a fan of Natalie�s
for several years now,
and has requested that
the young actress
accept a posthumous award
on behalf of his mother.
Natalie played a major role
in the birthday celebration for Audrey,
a motion picture superstar
and UNICEF spokeswoman,
who died of colon cancer in 1993.
Sean also convinced Natalie
to serve as a member of the board of
The Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund,
which received the proceeds
of the 4 May 1999 event ~
money raised to expand
a child-abuse clinic
at Hackensack, New Jersey.
Natalie has agreed to reprise her role
of Queen Amidala in George Lucas'
continuing Star Wars space saga,
but she also hopes to attend
one of the Ivy League universities
that have accepted her.
Should she go to Harvard or Yale?
"I'm trying not to limit myself
and say acting is my life," she said.
"There are so many things that interest me
~ math, science, literature.
So many things to try."
FROM TEEN TO TEEN:
THOUGHTS FROM A YOUNG ACTRESS
By Natalie Portman
From the June 14, 1999 edition of Time Magazine
"Deep down, the young are lonelier than the old."
"I read this in a book somewhere,
and it's stuck in my mind.
As far as I can tell, it's true"
Anne Frank, Saturday, June 15, 1944
Statements like these betray conventional
perceptions of Anne Frank.
The popular image that she was a optimistic light
in a time of darkness is overturned
and made more complex by the fact
that she often wavered between moods.
Upon every reading, something different,
and even contradictory to
previous reactions, stands out.
I remember when I first
read the book at age 12,
what seemed important to me
was the relationship that
Anne shared with her father.
At 15, it was her friendship with Peter
and her burgeoning sexuality.
At 16, when I portrayed Anne on Broadway,
it was her flaws ~ vanity, overexcitability
and quickness to fight ~
that interested me the most.
And now, upon my most recent perusal
just weeks before my 18th birthday,
I am struck most strongly
by her introspection, solitude,
perfect self-awareness and sense of purpose.
Monitoring my reactions to the diary
has shown me how I was growing up.
Anne's objectivity when describing
her own emotions, thoughts and actions
allows the reader to become her
and to observe her at the same time.
Her direct style and self-comprehension
enabled her to put emotions into words
that most adolescents have a hard time
putting into thoughts.
Believing that she doesn't love her mother,
having aspirations of fame
and recalling touching a friend's breasts
are told delicately and unabashedly.
Anne did not excise these anecdotes
even in extensive editing
for potential publication.
Anne's literal entrapment and terror
figuratively describe the claustrophobia
and fears of teenage experience.
Personally, she let me know
that I was not weird
when I was not getting along with adults,
or was infatuated with a boy
I knew I didn't really like.
Fears of not accomplishing
anything as an adult,
dying without leaving a mark
and never finding love or happiness
became more normal,
but also more trivial to me,
because I had the privilege of life.
The passion Anne had in her life
and in her art injected my life
with these same elements as well.
Sensuality, love, anger, sadness
and joy became more alive to me
in my own development
and self-assessment.
But I am one person.
The entire world has been touched
by this young girl.
As war and violence persist in our world,
and in new, often terrifying forms
among young people, we continue
to look at Anne to remember
what we lose by hatred and brutality,
and to learn to preserve our integrity
and soul in a world
seemingly devoid of those elements.
The beauty and truth of her words
have transcended the limits
placed upon her life
by the darkness of human nature.
FILMOGRAPHY:
(1994) The Professional aka Leon ~ Matilda
(1995) Developing ~ Nina
(1995) Heat ~ Lauren
(1996) Beautiful Girls ~ Marty
(1996) Mars Attacks! ~ Taffy Dale
(1997) The Diary of Anne Frank on Broadway
(1997) Everyone Says I Love You ~ Laura
(1999) Anywhere But Here ~ Ann August
(1999) Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace ~ Queen Amidala
