Natalie Portman

Actress

• Born: June 9, 1981
• Place of Birth: Jerusalem, Israel

An actor on stage and on film, Portman is best known for her role as Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (1999, 2002, 2005).

Early Life

Natalie Portman was born June 9, 1981. Her father, medical student Avner Hershlag, and mother, Shelley Stevens, met at the Jewish student center at Ohio State University during the 1970s. Shelley’s ancestors had immigrated to the United States from Austria and Russia, and Avner’s parents had immigrated to Israel from Poland after World War II. Avner’s grandparents and several more of his relatives died during the Holocaust.

Avner and Shelley corresponded after he returned to Israel and were married when she visited him a few years later. Portman was born in Jerusalem in 1981, making her an Israeli citizen, and she was also an American citizen through her mother. In 1984, the Hershlags moved to the United States, where Avner became a resident surgeon in obstetrics and gynecology at George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, DC. Portman attended the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Maryland, while they lived in the area. The family relocated to Connecticut in 1988 when Avner received a fellowship to do research on fertility and reproduction at Yale University. In 1990, the Hershlags settled permanently in Long Island, New York, when Avner accepted positions at North Shore University Hospital on Long Island and New York University School of Medicine.

Portman attended a Jewish elementary school, the Solomon Schechter Day School of Glen Cove, New York, after the move and took ballet lessons until she was thirteen. She graduated from the Syosset High School, a secular public school, in 1999. During the summers, Portman attended the Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts in Huntington, New York, and the Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Camp in the Catskills. In June 2003, Portman graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree in psychology.

Already bilingual in Hebrew and English, Portman studied French, Japanese, German, and Arabic. In high school, she took all the science courses the school offered and was a semifinalist in the Intel Science Talent Search. In 2002, she cowrote a paper on memory in infants for a joint project between Harvard’s medical school and its Laboratory for Infant Study.

Life’s Work

Although Portman was a full-time student until 2003, she began acting professionally when she was only eleven. In 1992, she was chosen to understudy Britney Spears, who was playing the leading role in the Off-Broadway musical Ruthless! Portman’s film career began when she was cast in the role of a child who befriends a middle-aged assassin, played by Jean Reno, in Luc Besson’s 1994 film The Professional. Soon after getting the part, she adopted her maternal grandmother’s maiden name, Portman, as her professional name. In 1994, she appeared in the short television film Developing.

Portman played minor roles in the films Heat (1995), Everyone Says I Love You (1996), and Mars Attacks! (1996) and a major role in Beautiful Girls (1996). She turned down the role of the title character in the 1997 remake of Lolita, because it was too similar to the characters she had played in The Professional and Beautiful Girls. From 1997 to 1998, Portman played the title character in a new adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank on Broadway. She turned down a costarring role opposite Susan Sarandon in the film Anywhere but Here (1999) after learning it would involve a sex scene. However, she accepted the part after Sarandon insisted that the script be rewritten deleting the scene.

In 1995, George Lucas cast Portman as Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy: The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones (2002), and Revenge of the Sith (2005). She played an unwed teenage mother who gives birth in a Wal-Mart in Where the Heart Is (2000). This was the first film in which she was the primary star. Portman appeared in New York City’s Public Theater production of Anton Chekhov’s Chayka (1896; The Seagull, 1909) in July, 2001. The cast included Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Portman made a cameo appearance in the film Zoolander (2001) and appeared briefly as a widow in the film Cold Mountain (2003).

Portman appeared in the independent films Garden State and Closer in 2004. The latter film featured her critically acclaimed role as Alice, an exotic dancer who becomes the mistress of a novelist (Jude Law). In the science fiction thriller V for Vendetta (2005), Portman played a young woman who is saved from the secret police by the main character, known only by the initial V. Portman worked with a voice coach to speak with an English accent and allowed her head to be shaved. Another film featuring Portman, Free Zone, also came out in 2005.

Director Miloš Forman cast her in Goya’s Ghosts (2006); although he had not seen any of her film work, he thought she looked like a Francisco Goya painting. In 2007, Portman starred in the fantasy film Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium and the road film My Blueberry Nights. Portman appeared in The Other Boleyn Girl, a historical drama in which she plays Anne Boleyn, the second wife of England’s King Henry VIII, in 2008. In 2009, she starred opposite Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal in the contemporary drama Brothers. In 2010 she became an endorser for luxury goods maker Dior, featuring in many advertisements, and appeared in the psychological thriller Black Swan, in which she played a ballerina and for which she won a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for best actress. To prepare for the physically demanding role of a ballerina, she trained intensely with a professional ballerina. Although a dispute arose when one of Portman's body doubles questioned how much the dancing scenes actually featured Portman, director Darren Aronofsky claimed that the star indeed performed the majority of the dancing sequences.

In 2011 Portman starred in the comedies No Strings Attached and Your Highness, as well as the superhero blockbuster Thor, in which she played the scientist Jane Foster. She continued that role in the sequel Thor: The Dark World (2013). She was further cast in the Terrence Malick–directed drama Knight of Cups (2015) and the Western Jane Got a Gun (2015), and directed, cowrote, and starred in A Tale of Love and Darkness (2015), adapted from the book of the same name by Amos Oz, an Israeli author. Portman also delivered a speech to Harvard's graduating class in 2015.

In 2016, Portman starred as First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, wife of President John F. Kennedy, in the biographical drama Jackie. Portman portrays Jackie Kennedy as she navigates her first days as a widow following the assassination of her husband in 1963. Critics praised Portman's performance, for which she earned an Academy Award nomination. That same year, Portman served as a producer for the horror-comedy film Pride and Prejudice and Zombies starring Lily James as Elizabeth Bennet, the protagonist of Jane Austen's beloved classic novel Pride and Prejudice. The film, based on the New York Times bestseller by author Seth Grahame-Smith, received favorable reviews from critics. Portman then starred in the period drama film Planetarium (2016) and the romance film Song to Song (2017), the latter of which also featured a star-studded cast of Ryan Gosling, Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, and Rooney Mara; while both films received mixed reviews, Portman received praise for her performances.

In February 2018, Portman led the page-to-screen science fiction film Annihilation, based on the 2014 novel of the same title. Portman stars as protagonist Lena, a biologist seeking to unveil the mystery of her husband's disappearance. While the film received positive reviews from critics and audiences alike, it did not perform well at the box office, with approximately $32 million earned in the US against a $40 million budget before it headed to the streaming service Netflix one month later. That same year, she starred in the drama film The Death & Life of John F. Donovan and the musical drama Vox Lux. In 2019, Portman led in Lucy in the Sky, a film loosely inspired by the life of Lisa Nowak, a NASA astronaut. The film failed to perform well at the box office and generated poor critical and audience reception; however, Portman received widespread praise for her performance.

Portman returned as Jane Foster in the box-office hit Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), which grossed over $700 million worldwide. Portman's performance generated positive reviews from audiences and critics alike. In 2023, Portman starred alongside Julianne Moore in the critically acclaimed drama May December, a film inspired by the real-life story of Mary Kay Letourneau, a schoolteacher who became a convicted sex offender. Portman's performance in the film as the fictional actress Elizabeth Berry earned her a Golden Globe nomination at the 2023 Golden Globe Awards.

Portman's work in 2024 included the Apple TV miniseries Lady in the Lake. She portrays an aspiring reporter in the period thriller, which takes place in Baltimore, Maryland, in the 1960s. She also served as producer of the series.

In 2024 she and her husband of nearly twelve years--actor, dancer, choreographer, director, and producer Benjamin Millepied--divorced. He had choreographed the dance scenes of Black Swan and appeared in the film. They had two children together, Aleph and Amalia.

Significance

Portman starred in three of the six Star Wars films. By 2008, the series had grossed more than $5.5 billion, making it the third most commercially successful film franchise in history, behind the James Bond and Harry Potter films. In addition to Portman being the model for an action figure, Portman’s image appeared on posters, cans of Diet Pepsi, boxes of Kentucky Fried Chicken, and other merchandise items, making her a major celebrity from a young age. Because she had been a vegetarian since childhood, the Kentucky Fried Chicken image was embarrassing for Portman, but her contract gave her no say over how her image could be used.

Beyond her celebrity status, Portman also received significant praise for her acting talent. For her work in Black Swan, she received the Academy Award for best actress in a leading role, a Screen Actors Guild Award for outstanding perfromance by a female actor in a leading Role, and a BAFTA for best leading actress. She received a Golden Globe nomination for best supporting actress for her role in Anywhere but Here. Her performance in Closer earned her a supporting actress Golden Globe and a nomination for an Academy Award for best supporting actress.

Portman is also known for her advocacy on various social and political issues, including veganism and vegetarianism, environmentalism, and antipoverty efforts.

Bibliography

Aftab, Kaleem. "Natalie Portman Interview: Black Swan Actress Talks Anti-Semitism, Learning Hebrew and Directorial Debut A Tale of Love and Darkness." Independent, 21 Aug. 2015, www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/natalie-portman-interview-black-swan-actress-talks-antisemitism-learning-hebrew-and-directorial-debut-a-tale-of-love-and-darkness-10465366.html. Accessed 23 Sept. 2015.

Dargis, Manohla. "May December Review: She’ll Be Your Mirror." The New York Times, 30 Nov. 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/movies/may-december-review-natalie-portman-julianne-moore.html. Accessed 22 Mar. 2024.

Dickerson, James L. Natalie Portman: Queen of Hearts. ECW Press, 2002.

Hemphill, Meg. “Natalie Portman.” In Style, Nov. 2006, p. 95.

Johnson, Anna. “Natalie, Naturally.” In Style, Dec. 2007, p. 154.

Lennon, Christine. "Natalie Portman's New Love." Bazaar, Hearst Communications, 9 July 2015.

Mangan, Lucy. "Lady in the Lake Review--Natalie Portman's TV Debut Is Absolutely Impeccable." The Guardian, 19 July 2024, www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/article/2024/jul/19/lady-in-the-lake-review-natalie-portmans-tv-debut-is-absolutely-impeccable. Accessed 3 Sept. 2024.

"Natalie Portman." IMDb, 2024, www.imdb.com/name/nm0000204/. Accessed 3 Sept. 2024.

Portman, Natalie. “Ten Questions.” Time, 10 Mar. 2008, p. 4.

Stein, Daniele. “Sister Act.” W, Mar. 2008, p. 434.

Weber, Bruce. “The Good Girl.” Teen Vogue, Dec. 2007, pp. 192-195.

Wood, Gaby. “Natural Natalie.” Marie Claire, Jan. 2010, pp. 100-109.