Natalie Portman

Natalie Portman (real name Natalie Hershlag) was born on June 9, 1981 in Jerusalem, Israel. She is an Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe Award-winning Israeli-American actress.

Biography and Career :

Natalie Portman , as a young child , spent her school holidays attending theatre camps where she developed her love of acting. After some experience in an off-Broadway musical, she was cast in Leon (released in North America as The Professional) at age twelve.

During the mid-1990s,Natalie Portman had small roles in films such as Heat, Everyone Says I Love You and Mars Attacks!, as well as having a major role in Beautiful Girls. She placed a priority on education and pursued tertiary education even when it conflicted with her acting career.

In the late 1990s, Natalie Portman was cast as Queen Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Recent roles include Anywhere But Here, Garden State, Closer, and V for Vendetta. For Closer, Natalie Portman received a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Academy Award.

Her father, Avner Hershlag, is an Israeli medical doctor specializing in the research and treatment of human fertility and reproduction (reproductive endocrinology). Her mother, Shelley Stevens, is a Jewish American artist who now works as her agent.

Natalie Portman's father's family are descendants of Jewish immigrants from Poland and Romania, while her mother's family were Jewish immigrants from Austria and Russia; her paternal grandfather's parents died in Auschwitz and her Romanian-born great-grandmother was a spy for the British during World War II.

Her parents met at a Jewish student center at Ohio State University, where her mother was selling tickets. Natalie Portman's father returned to Israel, but the two corresponded and were married when her mother visited Israel a few years later.

When Natalie Portman was three years old, her family moved from Israel to her mother's native United States, where her father pursued his medical training. The family lived in Washington, D.C. in 1984 and then Connecticut in 1988, before finally settling down in Syosset, New York in 1990.

Natalie Portman is an only child and very close to her parents, who are often seen with her at movie premieres; her mother always accompanied pre-adult Portman to movie shoot locations.

Natalie Portman started taking dancing lessons at the age of four, performed in local troupes, and dreamed of dancing on Broadway. At the age of ten Portman was discovered in a pizza parlor by an agent for Revlon, who offered her an opportunity to model. She asked to be introduced to acting talent scouts, and took "Portman", her grandmother's maiden name, as her professional stage surname.

Starting at age 13, Natalie Portman spent her school holidays attending upscale theatre camps Stagedoor Manor and Usdan Camp, where she forged her love for acting, playing roles in the camp productions such as the title character in Anne of Green Gables, Dream Laurey in Oklahoma! and Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 1993 Natalie Portman was handed her first professional role as an understudy for the off-Broadway musical Ruthless!.

Her inaugural experience in professional theatre led her to audition for Luc Besson's 1994 film Leon (aka The Professional). She was intially turned down for the role due to her youth, but further auditioning won her the part. Soon after Portman was given the part, she took Portman as her stage name in the interest of privacy. In the film, Portman plays an orphaned girl who befriends a much older assassin. Leon opened on November 18, 1994 and marked her feature film debut at age thirteen. That same year appeared in the short film Developing which aired on television.