Natalie Portman

At 42 years old, Natalie Portman has this physical status:

Natalie Portman (born Neta-Lee Hershlag; June 9, 1981) is an Israeli and American citizen who subsequently worked in Israel and the United States.

Prolific in film since a teenager, she has appeared in blockbusters and also starred psychologically in independent films, for which she has received numerous awards, including an Academy Award and two Golden Globe Awards. Portman began acting in the action film Léon: The Professional (1994), where she appeared as the young protégée of a hitman.

When she was in high school, she made her Broadway debut in 1998's The Diary of a Young Girl, and gained international recognition for her role as Padmé Amidala in Star Wars: Episode I (1999).

Portman served at Harvard University for a bachelor's degree in psychology, as well as acting in Anton Chekhov's Resurrection of his play The Seagull in 2001.

Portman was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2004 and received a Golden Globe Award for playing a mysterious stripper in the romantic drama Closer. Portman's career progressed with her roles as Evey Hammond in V for Vendetta (2006), Anne Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), and a tumultuous ballerina in the psychological horror film Black Swan (2010), for which she received the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Jane Foster appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero films Thor (2011) and Thor: The Dark World (2013), establishing her as one of the world's best-paid actresses.

Jacqueline Kennedy was in the biopic Jackie (2016), receiving her third Academy Award nomination, and a biologist in the science fiction film Annihilation (2018). Eve (2008) and the biographical drama A Tale of Love and Darkness (2015) were two of Portman's directorial ventures.

She is a vocal advocate for animal rights and environmental causes in America and Israel.

She is married to dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied, with whom she has two children.

Early life and background

Natalie Herschlag was born in Jerusalem on June 9, 1981, to Jewish parents with roots in Poland, Austria, and Russia. Shelley (née Stevens), an American homemaker who works as a Portman's representative, and Avner Hershlag, an Israeli-born gynecologist, are the only children of the couple. Her maternal grandparents were American Jews, while her paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants to Israel.

Portman and her family first lived in Washington, D.C., but in 1988, they migrated to Connecticut and then to Long Island, Rhode Island. While living in Washington, Maryland, Portman attended Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Maryland. Hebrew is her mother tongue. She attended the Solomon Schechter Day School of Nassau County while living on Long Island. She studied ballet and modern dance at the American Theater Dance Workshop, as well as regularly attending the Usdan Center for the Performing Arts. Portman, who was decribing her early life, has said she was "different from the other kids." I was more optimistic. I knew what I liked and what I wanted, but I didn't do well, and I worked really hard. "I was a very serious kid."

A Revlon agent spotted Portman at a pizza restaurant and asked her to be a child model when she was ten years old. She turned down the job but took advantage of finding an acting agent. She auditioned for the 1992 off-Broadway Ruthless!, a comedy about a girl who is about to commit murder in order to lead a school performance. Portman and Britney Spears were selected as understudies for actress Laura Bell Bundy.

Personal life and endorsements

Portman is married to French dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied, with whom she has two children. The couple began dating in 2009 after having met while filming Black Swan and wed in a Jewish wedding held in Big Sur, California, on August 4, 2012. The family lived in Paris for a time after Millepied accepted the position of dance director of the Paris Opera Ballet, and Portman has expressed a desire to become a French citizen. In 2013, she was living in Los Angeles. She bought a Montecito mansion in 2017 which she sold in 2021 for $8 million.

Portman said in 2006 that she felt more Jewish in Israel and that she'd like to raise her children Jewish. "I'd say that I want to raise my children Jewish but that is the most important thing is to have someone who is a good person and who is a partner." Millepied said he was in the process of converting to Judaism in January 2014.

Portman joined Dior in 2010 and appeared in several of the company's advertising campaigns. After a complaint from Dior's competitor, L'Oreal, that the advertisement "misleadingly exaggerated the likely effects of the product," Britain's Advertising Standards Authority banned a Dior mascara in October 2012. "The ad was likely to deceive," the ASA found. Miss Dior, a collection of the company's fragrances, is influenced by Catherine Dior's appearance. Portman is the star of one of the company's fragrances, Miss Dior. She has appeared in advertisements for the fragrance and launched Rose N'Roses, a new version of the fragrance, in 2021.

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Career

Six months after Ruthless!

Portman auditioned for and secured a leading role in Luc Besson's action drama Léon: The Professional (1994). She adopted Portman, her paternal grandmother's maiden name, as her stage name to protect her anonymity. She portrayed Mathilda, an orphanage child who befriends a middle-aged hitman (played by Jean Reno). Her parents were hesitant to allow her to act due to the script's explicit sexual and violent nature, but after Besson took out the nudity and the killings committed by Portman's character, she relinquished it. Since those scenes were cut, Portman's mother said she had no objections to the film. Even so, her mother was dissatisfied with some of the final film's "sexual twists and turns" that weren't part of the script. Hal Hinson of The Washington Post praised Portman for her "genuine sense of tragedy" on her part, but Los Angeles Times editor Peter Rainer said she wasn't "enough of an actress to unfold Mathilda's pain" and chastised Besson's sexualization of her character.

After filming The Professional, Portman went back to school and filmed a scene in Marya Cohn's short film Developing. She portrayed a young girl struggling with her mother's (played by Frances Conroy) cancer in this series. She also attended the Stagedoor Manor performing arts festival, where she appeared Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables. Michael Mann gave her the small part of Al Pacino's character's suicidal stepdaughter's character in Heat (1995) for her ability to portray chaos without hysteria. In the ensemble comedy-drama Beautiful Girls (191996), the actress was taken as a precocious teenager flirting with her much-older neighbor (played by Timothy Hutton). "Portman, a budding knockout," Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote, "is scene-stealingly good even in a overly showy role." She returned to Stagedoor Manor later to appear in a version of the musical Cabaret. Portman appeared in Woody Allen's musical Everyone Says I Love You and Tim Burton's comedic science fiction film Mars Attacks in 1996.

In Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996), Portman was cast opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, but she was forced to withdraw during rehearsals because studio employees decided she was too young for the job. "Natalie was stunning in the film, but it was too much of a burden for her at that age," Luhrmann said. Adrian Lyne's Lolita, based on the same book, was also available, but she turned down the role due to its overt sexual content. She later regretted that her participation in The Professional and Beautiful Girls triggered a string of invitations to play a sexualized teen, adding that "cos it scared me, it made me reluctant to do sexy stuff." In a Broadway revival of Anne Frank's Diary of Anne Frank, which was staged at the Music Box Theatre from December 1997 to May 1998, Portman instead starred as Anne Frank. She visited Anne Frank House in Amsterdam twice, met with Miep Gies, who had saved Anne's diary after the family was captured; she discovered a connection with Frank's tale because of her own family's involvement with the Holocaust. Greg Evans, who wrote about Variety, said she disliked her performance, which he believes had "less of the charm, budding genius, or even brittle intelligence that the diary itself reveals." On the other hand, Ben Brantley discovered an "ineffable kindness in her annoyance." The performance was emotionally draining for her, as she attended high school during the day and performed at night; she wrote personal papers in Time and Seventeen magazines about her participation in the play.

In 1997, Portman began filming the part of Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, marking her first big-budget production. Episode I – The Phantom Menace, the series's first film, was released in 1999 when she was in her senior year of high school. When she was cast, Portman was unfamiliar with the franchise and watched the original Star Wars trilogy before filming began. Lauren Bacall, Audrey Hepburn, and Katharine Hepburn's film inspired her character's accent and demeanor, and she studied closely with director George Lucas on her character's voice and demeanor, as well as watching their voices and stature. Portman's filming in Algeria's arduous locations was difficult. She did not attend the film premiere in order to prepare for her high school finals. Critics sluggish, but it was the second highest-grossing film of all time to that point, and it established Portman as a global celebrity.

Portman graduated from Syosset High School in 1999. In the Intel Science Talent Search, her high school paper, "A Simple Method to Demonstrate the Enzymatic Production of Hydrogen from Sugar," co-authored with scientists Ian Hurley and Jonathan Woodward, was selected. After learning that it would involve a sex scene, Portman initially turned down a lead role in the coming-of-age film Anywhere But Here (1999), but director Wayne Wang and actress Susan Sarandon (who portrayed Portman's mother in the film) insist that the script be rewritten. She was shown a new draft and decided to accept it. Portman's appearance was "astonish," Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon said, "unlike any number of actresses her age, she's neither too maudlin nor too plucky." For this film, she was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress award at the Golden Globe Theatre.

Portman's only screen appearance in 2000 was in Where the Heart Is, a Texas romance in which she played a pregnant teenager. She began attending Harvard University to complete her bachelor's degree in psychology, and she dramatically decreased her acting roles over the next few years. She worked as Alan Dershowitz' research assistant and researched advanced Hebrew literature and neurobiology, and she worked as both Hebrew literature and neurobiology. She returned to Broadway (at the Delacorte Theater) to perform Chekhov's drama The Seagull, directed by Mike Nichols and co-starring Meryl Stymour Hoffman and Philip Seymour Hoffman in the summer of 2001. "The most surprising surprises came from Portman," Linda Winer of Newsday said, "from the girl with ambition to Chekhov's most difficult symbol of destruction." Portman appeared in the comedy Zoolander in 2001 as one of several celebrities who made cameo appearances. During her summer break of 2000, she reprised her role of Amidala in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, which she had shot in Sydney and London. She was ecstatic to play a mature woman with no reliance on the male lead. "I don't care if [college] deruins my career," she said when asked about balancing her work and education. I'd rather be smarter than a movie star." "Frontal lobe activation during object permanence" is a term of memory, according to a research conducted in 2002 by the author of "Frontal lobe activation during object permanence: results from near-infrared spectroscopy. Portman graduated from Harvard in 2003 and was her sole screen appearance that year in the case of a young mother in the war film Cold Mountain.

Portman debuted in the romantic comedy Garden State, which was written and directed by its star Zach Braff. She became the first actress to commit to the film after identifying with her role: a spirited teenage girl suffering from epilepsy. Nathan Rabin of The A.V. outlined her participation in it. Club is a club. Pixie Dream Girl, a stereotype female role designed to help a male protagonist, is a prime example of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl character type. Later, a portman said it was disturbing to have contributed to the trope. Julia Roberts, Jude Law, and Clive Owen all followed her and in Closer, a romantic drama directed by Mike Nichols based on the same name and starring Julia Roberts, Jude Law, and Clive Owen. After turning down such roles in the past, Portman accepted her first sexually explicit adult role, claiming that it represented her own maturity as a person. She had shot her first nude scenes for the film, but they were deleted from the final cut when she argued that they were not necessary to the tale. Closer's revenue was over $115 million worldwide against a $27 million budget, and critic Peter Travers observed Portman's "blazing, breakthrough debut" in which she "digs so deeply into the core of her character that they can wear the same skin." She received the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and was nominated for an Academy Award in the same category.

Star Wars Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, the final installment of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, was Portman's first film release of 2005. The film debuted at $848 million and ranked as the second-most grossing film of the year. In Free Zone, a Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai's drama, she played a Jewish-American girl. She read memoirs of Yitzhak Rabin, which she said allowed her to investigate both the role and her own roots in order to prepare. Controversy arose after she shot a kissing scene at the Western Wall, where gender segregation is enforced, and she later released an apology. Critics also disapproved of the film's hard-handed portrayal of Middle East tensions. Evey Hammond, based on the comedies of the same name, was Portman's last film appearance in 2005, in an alternative future in which a neo-fascist regime has subjugated the UK. She was attracted by the script's provocative quality and worked with a dialect coach to speak in an English accent. In a scene in which her character is tortured, her head was shaved on film; she viewed it as an opportunity to rid herself of vanity. Ruthe Stein of the San Francisco Chronicle called it Portman's best showing to date, and she praised her words and actions rather than her bald head. She was given the Saturn Award for Best Actress.

Portman started in 2006 by hosting an episode of the television sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live. Incredibad, a Lonely Island tribute to one of her sketches, entitled "Natalie's Rap," was released later in 2009. "Je t'aime," an anthology film starring eighteen short films, she appeared in director Tom Tykwer's segment "Faubourg Saint-Denis." She appeared in Milo Forman's Ghosts about the painter Francisco Goya later this year. Since noticing a similarity between her and Goya's portrait The Milkmaid of Bordeaux, Forman cast her in the film. She insisted on using a body double for her nude scenes after learning on set that she had to do them when they weren't in the script. Portman's reputation sparked mainly critical feedback, but Roger Ebert expressed admiration for his dual role as "with fearlessness conviction."

Portman began in 2007 by replacing Jodie Foster in Wong Kar-wai's romantic drama My Blueberry Nights, which was his first English-language film. She worked with a poker tutor to prepare for her work as a gambler. "For the first time she's not playing a waif or a child princess, but a mature, full-bodied woman," Richard Corliss of Time magazine said. Her next film appearance was in Hotel Chevalier, a short film from Wes Anderson that served as a prelude to his film The Darjeeling Limited (in which Portman had a cameo). She and Jason Schwartzman play former lovers who reunite in a Paris hotel room in the short film. Portman's extended nude scene was the first time she'd been engaged with the undue spotlight on it; later, she was dissatisfied with the lack of nude, and she subsequently decided against doing nude again. Portman, who wanted to work in different genres, has taken part in Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, portraying an employee of a magical toy store. She appeared in Paul McCartney's "Dance Tonight" from his album Memory Almost Full, directed by Michel Gondry, and she was also in Paul McCartney's music video "Dance Tonight."

In the period film The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), Scarlett Johansson and Portman portrayed rival sisters Mary and Anne Boleyn, respectively. She was ecstatic to work opposite another actress of her age, but she was shocked that such casting was unusual in film. Princeman's English accent was mocked, and she wrote that "doesn't quite have the heft to make Anne Anne a true power player." The film had modest box office returns. She was a jury member of the 2008 Cannes Film Festival as well as a founder of handsomecharlie films after her late dog died. The short film Eve, Portman's directorial debut, opened the short-film screenings at the 65th Venice International Film Festival. It's about a young woman who goes to her grandmother's romantic date, and Portman drew inspiration from her own grandmother's older woman.

Portman's first film role of 2009 was a poorly received adaptation of Ayelet Waldman's novel Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, titled The Other Woman. She appeared in a faux perfume commercial directed by Roman Polanski, as well as in the anthology film New York, I Love You. She directed a segment and appeared in a separate segment directed by Mira Nair. In the drama film Brothers, a reimagining of the 2004 Danish film of the same name, Portman took on a role opposite Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal. Her position was that of a war widow, for which she collaborated with military wives to prepare. Portman found it difficult to shoot certain scenes without a script during the 2007-08 Writer Guild of America strike, and it was difficult to shoot certain scenes without a script. Claudia Puig of USA Today found her to be "subpoena and reactive in a situation that doesn't call for her to do anything else."

Portman, who produced and co-starred alongside Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the 2010 black comedy Hesher, was ecstatic to learn that he'd be playing Swan Lake in Darren Aronofsky's psychological horror film Black Swan. She was coached by the elite ballerina Mary Bowers and in preparation, she trained for five to eight hours a day for six months and lost 20 pounds (9 kg). Dan Jolin's performance was lauded, writing for Empire; she was "simultaneously at her most vulnerable and her most predatory" at once frostily brittle and raunchily malleable [...] before peaking at a show's denouement with a raw, alluring showtopper of a performance. Black Swan became a hit on the global stage, grossing over $329 million against a $13 million budget, and winning Portman multiple awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actress. Following her Oscar win, controversies arose over who did the majority of the on-screen dancing in the film. Sarah Lane, one of Portman's dancing doubles, said that she appeared in only around five percent of the full-body shots, despite being advised not to speak out about it during awards season. Aronofsky defended Portman by claiming she had seen 80 percent of the on-screen dancing.

Portman's next film project was No Strings Attached (2011), a romantic comedy in which she starred with Ashton Kutcher as a young couple in a casual sex marriage. She characterized the experience of making it as a "palate cleanser" from Black Swan's intensity. Its unfavorable reviews, but it was still a commercial success. She then joined Your Highness for the chance of portraying an athletic and foul-mouthed character, which she felt was unhearded for actresses. Critics were dismissive of the film's reliance on scatological humor, which culminated in a box-office bomb. Portman played Jane Foster, a scientist and love interest of the titular character of the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero film Thor, playing Chris Hemsworth. She loved the prospect of Kenneth Branagh directing a big budget film that emphasized character; she committed to it before receiving a script; and helped develop her role by reading science biography, including Rosalind Franklin. Variety's Richard Kuipers praised Portman's "good work in a thinly written role" for adding to the film's romantic subplote. Thor's debut as the 15th highest-grossing film of 2011.

Portman was ranked #17 on Forbes' list of the top paying actors in Hollywood in 2012. In Paul McCartney's music video "My Valentine," she appeared with Johnny Depp and was her sole screen appearance of the year. Jane Foster reprised her role in Thor: The Dark World, which earned over $644 million worldwide, to debut as the country's 10th highest-grossing film of 2013. Forbes ranked her in their Celebrity 100 list of 2014, estimating her earnings from the previous year to $13 million.

Portman appeared in Terrence Malick's experimental drama film Knight of Cups, which was her first film project after giving birth to her first child. She shot for it within a week of returning to work, but she didn't get a traditional script or dialogues, improvising the majority of her scenes with Bale. She said that her shooting with Malick inspired her own directorial venture, A Tale of Love and Shadow, which was published in the same year. The Hebrew-language film, based on Israeli author Amos Oz's autobiographical book of the same name and set in Jerusalem during the British Mandate of Palestine's last years, starred Portman, who also produced and co-wrote it. She had wanted to adapt the book since she first read it a decade ago but decided against it until she was old enough to play the leading role of a mother herself. She worked closely with Amos, showing him drafts of her script when she adapted the novel. The New York Times' A. O. Scott found it to be a "conscient interpretation of a difficult book" and was appreciative of Portman's aspirations as a filmmaker. She co-produced and starred in Jane Got a Gun, a western film about a teenage mother desperate for revenge. The production was initially planned to be directed by Lynne Ramsay and was plagued with numerous difficulties. Ramsay didn't turn up on day for the first day of filming and was eventually replaced by Gavin O'Connor. Before Ewan McGregor appeared as the male lead, Michael Fassbender, Jude Law, and Bradley Cooper were all cast as the male lead. Portman's "stately results" was not enough to save the "laborious and solemn western," according to Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, and it brought in less than $4 million against its $25 million budget.

In the Pablo Larran-directed biopic Jackie (2016) about Kennedy's life immediately after her husband's assassination in 1963. She was initially coerced to take on the role of a well-known public figure, and she later researched Kennedy extensively by watching videos of her, reading books, and listening to audiotapes of her interviews. Kennedy's unique speaking style was also incorporated into the curriculum. "Her Jackie is both inscrutable and naked, broken but unquestionably solid, a mess and still remarkably dignified," narrates David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter called it a "incandescent performance." She received the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She appeared in Rebecca Zlotowski's French-Belgian drama Planetarium as a producer for the comedy horror film Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, directed by Burr Steers, and she appeared in Rebecca Zlotowski's French-Belgian drama Planetarium. Portman's second collaboration with Terrence Malick, which like their previous film polarized analysts, was a 2017 experimental romance Song to Song.

Portman appeared in the science fiction film Annihilation, based on Jeff VanderMeer's book in 2018. She worked as a biologist and former soldier who was researching a cryptic region of mutating organisms in a remote quarantined zone. She was thrilled to be able to direct a rare female-led science fiction film, and she and her family were relocated near Pinewood Studios during filming. She underwent movement preparation with dancer Bobbi Jene Smith for the action sequences. The Guardian's Benjamin Lee noted Portman's "impressive presence" and praised her for playing the part without needing sentimentality. It was only a limited theatrical release and was widely distributed on Netflix. She was last seen in Xavier Dolan's first English-language film, The Death & Life of John F. Donovan (2018), which was described as a "shocking misfire" by IndieWire's Eric Kohn. In Vox Lux, she appeared as a struggling pop star, sharing the role with Raffey Cassidy. She was attracted to the prospect of showcasing the negative effects of fame, and she watched documentaries on musicians and listened to Sia's music in the film. She prepared with her husband, Benjamin Millepied, who choreographed the sequence for the climactic dance routines. Kritikers were split on Portman's success, but it was lauded unanimously. Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph wrote that "this role has a similar audacity and extravagance to Black Swan and Jackie, which few actresses would dare attempt, let alone be allowed to get away with."

For Portman's brief appearance in the 2019 superhero film Avengers: Endgame, a used video from Thor: The Dark World and a new voice-over were used. In the drama Lucy in the Sky, directed by Noah Hawley, she later played a mentally fragile astronaut (based on Lisa Nowak). Reese Witherspoon, the film's director, had to reschedule due to a scheduling conflict, was replaced by her. Despite the fact that Portman's role was well-received, the film was still not well received, though Portman's performance was lauded. Jane Foster appeared in the animated series What If...? for the next year. Portman regained her role as Foster in the sequel Thor: Love and Fire, in which her role as Foster is restored. After speaking with director Taika Waititi, who promised to play her character in a "adventurous and amusing" manner, she decided to return to the franchise. "Portman's appearance as both her human and her heralded state shows why it's great to see Jane again." Roger Allen of RogerEbert.com wrote: "In both her human and her heralded state, she will be reminded that it's exciting to see her again."

In 2021, Portman and her production partner, Sophie Mas, founded MountainA, and the first-look television contract with Apple TV+ was signed. Lady in the Lake, Laura Lippman's book of the same name starring Portman, will be their first project.

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