Natalie Portman Biography

The family lived in Jerusalem till Natalie was 3, then moved to Washington for four years. Then came two years in Connecticut, before they settled on Long Island, where she'd attend Syosset High School. By this time, Natalie was well on her way toward a career in entertainment. She'd been dancing since the age of 4 but was really taken when she saw Dirty Dancing. Now she began to really perform, arranging pillows in rows in the family basement and charging adults 10 cents a throw to watch her. For an all-round education, her parents would take her to the theatre, to galleries and to many foreign lands. Her later co-star Susan Sarandon would describe Natalie's home-life as "a rarefied atmosphere", and she was absolutely correct.

A vegetarian since the age of 8 (she switched when she attended a medical conference with her father and witnessed laser surgery on a chicken), she also turned early to acting. In the summers, she'd attend the Usdan Theatre Art Camp, playing in such varied pieces as Fiorello and Annie Get Your Gun. Later, there'd be the Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Camp, where she'd play in Tapestry and the lead in Anne Of Green Gables, as well as Oklahoma! and the role of Sally Bowles in Cabaret. She was always working, as her parents expected her to. There was the Jewish cultural influence, emphasising education and hard work, but mum and dad pushed harder. "They have always made it quite clear that they believe I can be great," Natalie once said. "Had my parents expected less of me, I would not be the person I am now". Training in ballet, jazz and tap-dancing, she'd be an understudy for the lead in an off-Broadway show named Ruthless. Also on the cast-list would be Britney Spears, and the pair would stay close throughout their varying careers.

The work certainly paid off, though luck naturally played a huge part. Aged 11, before much of the aforementioned acting training, Natalie was spotted by a Revlon model scout in Mario's pizza joint in Long Island. She didn't want to be a model, but she did ask for contacts, which led to her getting an agent, which led to her auditioning for Leon. At first, she was turned down for being too young, but director Luc Besson saw something in her (that age!) and gave her a go. She was delighted, then took the script home, read it in full and wept when she realised exactly how intense this experience was going to be.

In Leon, Natalie played Mathilda, a young girl in New York whose family (including her beloved little brother) are slaughtered by bent cop Gary Oldman and his cronies when her dad messes up a drug deal. Fortunately, Natalie escapes the massacre by hiding in the apartment of Leon (the brilliant Jean Reno), a slow, child-like and wholly dedicated hit-man. Gradually, the odd couple become close - disturbingly close in some versions of the movie - as Mathilda learns the craft and seeks revenge. And Nathalie was magnificent, completely convincing as she matured from a terrified little girl into a near-grown woman ready to kill. Her reviews were stunning, with Besson saying he would direct a sequel only if Portman agreed to star. Natalie's classmates, on the other hand, were not keen to have a star in their midst, making her life something of a misery.

Failing to win a part in Little Women, Natalie was now cast in a far superior project, Michael Mann's Heat. Here renegade cop Al Pacino tracked super-crook Robert De Niro so remorselessly his own family life fell to pieces. Natalie played his daughter, Lauren Hanna, a young girl damaged by her parents squabbling and, as it turns out, suicidal. Mann would later note that Portman was quite recognisably "a prodigy".

After this came three wildly different roles, with the real stand-out coming first. In Ted Demme's Beautiful Girls, Tim Hutton played a pianist who returns to New England for his High School reunion, to find his friends, like himself, have women-trouble. There's affairs, adultery, awful pining for lost love - the tawdry lot. And then Hutton falls for his next-door-neighbour, played by Natalie, a 13-year-old who's far more mature than he (he actually says she's Christopher Robin to his Pooh Bear). Hutton and Portman are tremendous together, as the relationship builds and then they slowly drift apart. Their discussions are vital in explaining the film's point - that men are too often blighted by sexual imagery and visions of bliss, and thus can't see the real women in front of them, women with whom they could have a perfectly wonderful life. Amazingly, the movie was written by Stuart Rosenberg - better known for Con Air and Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead.

Following Beautiful Girls came Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You. This concerned love and loss among the denizens of New York's Upper East Side, with Alan Alda and Goldie Hawn playing a married couple with a big family. Goldie's ex, Joe (Allen), enjoys a fast-deteriorating affair with Julia Roberts. Meanwhile, lovers Ed Norton and Drew Barrymore are in trouble, as are Alan and Goldie's kids. Son Lukas Haas is a raging right-winger, while daughters Gaby Hoffmann and Natalie are both discovering boys. Or rather they've both discovered the SAME boy. Woody treats all this in the grand old style, having the participants occasionally burst into such classic songs as I'm Through With Love and Makin' Whoopee. Only Barrymore would be over-dubbed, believing her voice to be more than the public could bear.

And then came the painfully under-rated Mars Attacks!, Tim Burton's star-studded homage to 50s sci-fi. Jack Nicholson played the beleaguered president James Dale, with Glenn Close as his cold wife and Natalie as his bright, perky and thoroughly aware daughter, Tuffy. With her parents whacked by the alien invaders, it would be Tuffy who presented the medal of victory to teenage hero, Lukas Haas. Natalie and Lukas (himself formerly a child star) would actually date for a while in real life.

Two years into her career, and not yet sixteen, Natalie was seriously hot property. But she was picky, too. She's always said that she wanted to be a positive role model for girls, and would therefore choose positive roles. She'd never, she said, appear in a horror movie, or a "Jennifer Love Hewitt-type" film. So, she turned down Ang Lee's The Ice Storm, saying the material was "too dark" (Christina Ricci would take the role, and say she often took parts Portman declined). And she turned down Romeo And Juliet, saying she didn't like the age difference between her and Leonardo DiCaprio or some of the scenes she was expected to play with him. Then she turned down The Horse Whisperer and, most famously, she turned down Adrian Lyne's Lolita.

Natalie has often complained that too many young actors are so desperate for roles they allow themselves to be sexually exploited. Considering Lolita - though her parents, quite rightly, had much to do with her refusal - she said, "I don't think there needs to be a movie out where a child has sex with an adult". There were rumblings that the Portmans were prudish, but this was far from the case. For a start, due to her father's work, Natalie's family would talk about sex far, far more than most. And, anyway, who WOULD want to see their 14-year-old daughter having sex with Jeremy Irons? Natalie went further, decrying the loose morals of much of Hollywood's output. Discussing Pulp Fiction and the use of violence as a comedy tool, she said "I just don't like hearing people laugh at violence".

Natalie did try to live up to her pronouncements. Unlike many child stars before her, she didn't smoke, drink or do drugs. When Cosmopolitan in Germany asked her if she'd like having herself as a daughter, she replied "Well, of course. I am a good person - nice, smart, witty, trustworthy, know nice people, don't do drugs and earn a lot of money". Instead of signing up for Lolita and the rest, she spent the summer of 1996 on Broadway, starring in The Diary Of Anne Frank - she'd later write an article about Frank for Time Magazine, as well as picking up a Tony nomination for her efforts onstage.

Natalie would graduate from High School with honours in 1999. The same year came her biggest role yet, as Queen Amidala in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. Here Jedi Master Liam Neeson and his maverick apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi are sent to the planet Naboo, where young Amidala is being forced to sign a treaty with the evil Federation. They all escape to another planet, where they discover a young slave boy, named Anakin, all the while being pursued by the thoroughly unpleasant Darth Maul. Both young and innately serious, Natalie was excellent as the queen, both regal and girlish (qualities that would lead Harpers And Queen to describe her as "the new Audrey Hepburn"), though there were problems with her voice, which was changing throughout the lengthy filming period. She'd be asked to provide over-dubs at the end. She'd also miss the movie's big New York premiere, having to study for those final exams.

After Star Wars came a far more serious challenge, with Natalie going up against thespian heavyweight Susan Sarandon in Anywhere But Here. Here Sarandon played a small-town mother who, sick of her dull life, takes off for Beverly Hills with her daughter (Natalie) - the aim being for Natalie to become a movie star. Unfortunately, Natalie, who's the practical one here, wants to go to college on the East Coast and really can't stand her flamboyant mum. Thus there's much fun and fireworks, with Natalie being nominated for a Golden Globe. And it so nearly didn't happen. Natalie had originally turned the part down, not wanting to play a nude scene (not good for a role model and, besides, how embarrassing would it be to have your school-friends see you rolling around naked?). As Sarandon had co-star approval, she refused to continue without Natalie, so scenes were re-written. High praise, indeed. And Sarandon continued to laud Natalie after filming, saying "I felt at all times that I was working with an equal. She has a natural grace that doesn't make her seem as if she's of her generation". Co-incidentally again, in the movie Sarandon called Natalie her Pooh Bear, as Natalie had called Tim Hutton back in Beautiful Girls.

Next came Where The Heart Is, where Natalie played Novalee Nation, a pregnant 15-year-old Tennessee girl who's dumped on the way to California, and hides out in an Oklahoma Wal-Mart till she has the child - a kid quickly famed nationwide as "the Wal-Mart baby". The townsfolk, including Stockard Channing and Ashley Judd, are eccentric but wonderful (this, like Anywhere But Here, is based upon a modern American novel, where wonderful eccentrics are de rigeur), and a fantastic female cast is further boosted by Joan Cusack and Sally Field.

At this point, Natalie had the world at her feet. But, like Jodie Foster before her, she decided that to maximise her chances of success in life, she'd better go to college. Besides, she rather thought she'd like to be a doctor. "I'm going to college," she announced, to general amazement. "I don't care if it ruins my career. I'd rather be smart than a movie star". Natalie has often said she didn't find acting to be enough of an intellectual challenge.

So, in 2000, off she went to Harvard to study psychology, sharing a room with three other girls and taking preliminary classes in chemistry, War And Peace, advanced Hebrew and expository writing. After Star Wars, there were many fans out there who wanted to get in touch. The other eight Natalies on campus would be bombarded. But Portman, mindful of Foster's dreadful experiences at Yale, had changed her name again. Such was Natalie's fame that another actress-turned-Harvard-student, Oscar-nominee Elizabeth Shue, found herself wholly ignored.

At first, Natalie stressed that she would not act while at Harvard, other than in the Star Wars movies to which she was contracted. But her stance softened, as it did to sex scenes, which she said she would do if they were "meaningful". She spent the summer of 2001 in Central Park, as Nina in Chekhov's The Seagull where, at last, she had an affair with an older man - Kevin Kline. Part of Joseph Papp's Shakespeare In The Park project, it was a massively prestigious affair, with Natalie directed by Mike Nichols and playing alongside such luminaries as Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christopher Walken. She'd also agree to appear in Merchant-Ivory's Le Divorce, set (surprise, surprise) in Paris, but she pulled out when a relative was shot during the troubles in Israel.

Of course, when you're the star of Star Wars you don't need to do much else. Star Wars: Episode 2 - Attack Of The Clones made Natalie one of the best-known faces on the planet. Here, the action is set 10 years after The Phantom Menace. Queen Amidala has become a Senator, representing her planet, Naboo, but she's under threat of assassination by political separatists led by Count Dooku - played by Mr Evil himself, Christopher Lee. Protected by Obi-Wan Kenobi and his apprentice, young Anakin, she begins to fall for Anakin, adding the central romance necessary to lead to Star Wars: Episodes 3 to 6. It was rumoured that Natalie was seeing Hayden Christensen (Anakin) in real life, but she poo-pooed the notion.

Having graduated from Harvard in the June of 2003 with a degree in psychology, Portman's next release would be another epic, Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain. This would involve confederate soldier Jude Law's Homeric journey back from the war to his Carolina home and lover Nicole Kidman. In one of the movie's more poignant sequences, Portman would play a young widow and mother seized by Union troops who torture her child in order to get hold of her livestock, then threaten her with rape. Law, of course, bursts in to save the day, Portman's herself completing the job with a bloody act of vengeance.

Next would come a yet more challenging role, in Garden State, filmed during her final semester at Harvard (how she got that degree is anyone's guess). This was written and directed by Zach Braff, who also starred as a young man heavily medicated by his psychiatrist father Ian Holm ever since, as a child, he supposedly brought about the severe crippling of his mother. Now the mother has died and Braff returns home for the funeral, meeting up with and gradually falling for Portman, playing a cute, flighty, mendacious epileptic, a wonderfully neurotic girl who cajoles him into getting a life. It would be a major indie hit, made for $2.5 million and bringing in ten times that at the US box office.

She'd end 2004 with a very different role, reuniting with her Seagull director Mike Nichols and former co-star Jude Law for Closer. Here she played a stripper in a relationship with writer Law, with Law, over an extended period, falling for photographer Julia Roberts (another former co-star). Eventually, Law leaves Portman and Roberts leaves her beau Clive Owen, with the betrayed pair then hitting it off in explicit fashion in Portman's strip joint. To begin with, Portman seems the most decent of a pretty despicable bunch, exhibiting a life-battered soulfulness, but this doesn't last as the movie digs ever deeper into a black hole of selfishness, desire and distance. It would be Natalie's first overtly sexual role, and early in 2005 it would see her win a Golden Globe and be nominated for an Oscar.

Though Portman generally avoided the trappings of fame, living far from Hollywood, on Long Island, near her parents, 2004 did see her use her fame constructively. As well as campaigning for presidential hopeful John Kerry, she became a volunteer and spokesperson for FINCA, the Foundation for International Community Assistance. She'd come across this organisation while doing some research for a professor at Harvard and had been impressed both by its prime mover, Jordan's Queen Rania, and its aims - to help women in Third World countries establish a banking system that would offer constructive loans at very low interest. Portman would visit projects established in Guatemala and Uganda and throw her weight behind the movement. She'd also, in September, 2004, begin a course of studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

2005 would be another big year. Paris, Je T'Aime would give 20 directors (including Walter Salles, Sally Potter, Godard and the Coens) just five minutes each to tell a story relating to love in the French capital, the tales being joined by the narration of a mysterious witness to it all. Natalie's segment would be called True, directed by Tom Tykwer and would see blind Melchior Beslon, dumped by Portman over the phone, rapidly flash back to their sweet meeting, their intimate moments and the careless mistakes that led to the end. It was a beautiful piece, wonderfully performed.

And then there was Star Wars: Episode 3 - Revenge Of The Sith, where Anakin Skywalker was drawn ever closer to the Dark Side of the Force, helping to create the monstrous Galactic Empire, much to the chagrin of Portman, now his secret (and pregnant) wife. Star Wars, with its cult followers, conventions and multiple DVD box-sets, would ensure her worldwide fame for many years to come. More interesting, perhaps, would be Free Zone, a Middle Eastern road movie taking her back to her roots in Israel. Here, having quarrelled with rich mother Carmen Maura, she leapt into a cab driven by Hannah Lazlo and, together, the odd couple took off on a journey into violence and political intrigue.

It will be fascinating to see the roles Natalie Portman will now choose and the advancement she'll make as an actress. With Closer having seen her accepted as a top-flight performer, she could, quite easily, be one of the best ever. Her mum and dad told her she could be great. If she continues to follow in the footsteps of Jodie Foster, she probably will be.

Dominic Wills