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Smart, beautiful, grounded and conscientious, Natalie Portman is the ultimate nice Jewish girl. An actress who values education over stardom, she's a straight-A student, ardent vegetarian and devoted daughter who always makes her parents proud. "The best part about being friends with your parents is that no matter what you do, they always love you," says Portman sweetly.
Currently starring in historical biopic The Other Boleyn Girl - available now from Blockbuster - opposite Scarlett Johansson and Eric Bana, Portman is well known for playing characters who, much like herself, are gifted, assertive and uncommonly mature. At 27 years old, she's already enjoyed more than a decade of movie stardom, dividing her time between cool indie projects and enormous, in-your-face blockbusters.
Born Natalie Hershlag on June 9, 1981, in Jerusalem, Israel, to an Israeli doctor dad and an American artist mum, only child Portman moved with her folks to Washington D.C. in 1984, then to Connecticut in 1988 and finally Long Island, New York, in 1990. Trained in ballet, jazz, and tap dancing, she was discovered at the age of 11, by a Revlon model scout in a pizza parlour. Though her ambitions at the time ranged from astronaut to vet, and before that, she adds, "I wanted to be a mermaid and a fairy", Portman immediately hooked up with an acting agent and scored a co-starring role in Luc Besson's Leon in 1994. As debuts go, she couldn't have done any better. The tale of a precocious little girl who befriends a French hitman (Jean Reno), the film made the 12-year-old Portman a star overnight.
Still at school at the time, Portman never even once considered packing in her studies for life as rich dummy. "I'm going to college," she told the US press in 1994. "I don't care if it ruins my career. I'd rather be smart than a movie star.
"I'm pretty much a boring Goody Two-shoes," she confirms. "I've definitely gotten drunk before, I don't think it's possible to go through college without getting drunk, but I don't really like it at all. I actually tried my first cigarette last year at school. I just figured, if many people are smoking, there must be something to it, and before I pooh-pooh it I should at least know what it's about. I took one puff and I was like, OK, I was right. There's nothing to it. They're just wrong, it's disgusting."
Receiving additional recognition for her scene-stealing performance in Ted Demme's Beautiful Girls, Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You and Tim Burton's Mars Attacks!, all three released in 1996, Portman had the world on a plate but took a break from the spotlight to focus on her studies, returning in 1999 with the first of a trio of science fiction epics guaranteed to consolidate her fame. While somehow managing to study psychology at Harvard at the same time, Portman cranked out George Lucas's Star Wars prequels, The Phantom Menace in 1999, Attack of the Clones in 2002 and Revenge of the Sith in 2005. At the time of her being cast as plucky Princess Amidala, she'd never seen the original Star Wars movies, and after the first was completed in '99, she had to miss the premiere so she could study for her high school final exams.
Afterwards, she starred in two critically acclaimed comedy dramas, Anywhere But Here 1999) and Where the Heart Is (2000), featuring in Cold Mountain in 2003, Garden State in 2004, and, Mike Nichols' big-screen adaptation of Patrick Marber's Broadway hit Closer (2004). Winning a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress, Portman's work in Closer also earned her an Academy Award nomination in the same category. "It was such a shock winning the Golden Globe," says Portman. "I was so sure I wasn't going to win it, I went up to Meryl Streep [nominated for The Manchurian Candidate] before the show and said, "You're going down." We'd done a play together, so I knew her pretty well, but to me, it was a big joke, like, I'm going to win against Meryl - yeah, right. But when they called my name, all I could think was, 'oh no, Meryl's going to be mad at me!'"
Natalie takes pride in the fact that she's a role model for girls and chooses her roles accordingly. She originally turned down the role of Ann August in the film Anywhere But Here (1999) because of a love scene between herself and Corbin Allred that required nudity. Susan Sarandon, who had co-star approval, said she couldn't continue the movie without Portman, so the script was re-written without the scene and she accepted the role. Portman was also the first choice to play Juliet in Romeo + Juliet (1996) but turned it down because of the rude stuff and the age difference between her and Leonardo DiCaprio.
"Young actors often don't think of the consequences of doing nudity or sex scenes," she explains. "They want the role so badly that they agree to be exploited, and then end up embarrassing family, friends, and even strangers."
In 1997, she turned down the title role in Adrian Lyne's Lolita, due to her feelings about young adult actors/actresses being exposed to sex in films, and she also turned down the role of Wendy in The Ice Storm (1997) because she felt the material was "too dark." Eventually, the role went to Christina Ricci, who has said she often gets the projects that Natalie turns down.
Coming up later this year in Brothers, a war drama co-starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Tobey Maguire, and next year in anthology romance New York, I Love You, Portman's clearly not about to give up acting any time soon, and that's fine by me. For now, at least, the psychological world is going to have to wait.
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