Natalie Portman

Natalie Portman, born Natalie Hershlag on June 9, 1981, at Hadassah Medical Center in Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, is an actress, film producer, and director holding dual Israeli and American citizenship. She is the only child of Shelley Stevens, an Ohio-born artist, and Avner Hershlag, an Israeli-born gynecologist. Her maternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Russia and Austria who settled in the United States, while her paternal grandparents emigrated from Poland to Israel in the late 1930s. Her paternal grandfather had led a Jewish youth movement in Poland; the family members he left behind were killed at Auschwitz. Her paternal grandmother, originally from Romania, worked as a spy for the British during World War II. Portman adopted her paternal grandmother's maiden name as her professional stage name.

Her family relocated to the United States when she was three, living first in Washington, D.C., where she attended Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Maryland, before moving to Connecticut in 1988 and eventually settling in Syosset, Long Island. On Long Island she attended the Solomon Schechter Day School of Nassau County, studied ballet and modern dance at the American Theater Dance Workshop, and regularly attended the Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts. Hebrew is her native language.

Portman's path toward acting began at age ten, when a Revlon agent spotted her at a pizza restaurant and offered her modeling work. She declined but used the encounter to secure an acting agent. She subsequently auditioned for the 1992 off-Broadway production Ruthless!, a musical in which she and Britney Spears were chosen as understudies for star Laura Bell Bundy. Six months after that production ended, she auditioned for and won the leading role of Mathilda in Luc Besson's action drama Léon: The Professional (1994), playing an orphan who befriends a middle-aged hitman portrayed by Jean Reno. Her parents agreed to the role only after Besson removed scenes involving nudity and killings by her character.

Following The Professional, Portman appeared in Michael Mann's Heat (1995) and Ted Demme's Beautiful Girls (1996), the latter earning praise from The New York Times critic Janet Maslin, who described her as "scene-stealingly good." Also in 1996, she had brief roles in Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You and Tim Burton's Mars Attacks!, and was cast in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet before dropping out when studio executives determined she was too young for the role opposite Leonardo DiCaprio.

Portman made her Broadway debut in a revival of the drama The Diary of Anne Frank, staged at the Music Box Theatre from December 1997 to May 1998, playing the title role. In preparation for the part, she visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam twice and met Miep Gies, who had preserved Anne's diary after the family's capture. Portman found a personal connection to Frank's story through her own family's history with the Holocaust. The production drew mixed critical notices; writing for Variety, Greg Evans found her portrayal lacking in charm and intelligence, while Ben Brantley identified an ineffable grace in her performance.

While still in high school, Portman gained international recognition for her casting as Padmé Amidala in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999), a role she continued in the prequel trilogy through 2005. From 1999 to 2003, she attended Harvard University, earning a bachelor's degree in psychology. During that period she reduced her acting workload but appeared in a 2001 revival of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull at The Public Theater.

Her screen career gained significant momentum in 2004 when she won a Golden Globe Award and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her work in Closer. She subsequently portrayed Evey Hammond in V for Vendetta (2005), Anne Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), and a troubled ballerina in Black Swan (2010), the last of which earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress. Her portrayal of Jacqueline Kennedy in Jackie (2016) brought her a third Academy Award nomination. She also appeared as Jane Foster across three films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Thor (2011), Thor: The Dark World (2013), and Thor: Love and Thunder (2022).

In addition to acting, Portman directed the short film Eve (2008) and the biographical drama A Tale of Love and Darkness (2015), in which she also starred. In 2021 she co-founded the production company MountainA, under which she produced and starred in May December (2023) and the miniseries Lady in the Lake (2024). Her accolades across her career include an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and two Golden Globe Awards. Portman has also been an advocate for women's rights, environmental issues, and animal welfare, supporting organizations including the Human Rights Foundation and the Jane Goodall Institute.