Natalie Portman (born Natalie Hershlag; Hebrew: נטלי הרשלג; June 9, 1981) is an actress with dual
American and Israeli citizenship. Her first role was as an orphan taken in by a
hitman in the 1994 action film Léon: The Professional, but mainstream success
came when she was cast as Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (released
in 1999, 2002 and 2005). In 1999, she enrolled at Harvard University to study
psychology while still working as an actress. She completed her bachelor's
degree in 2003.
But in 2004, Portman was at the forefront of both Garden
State, a moody dramedy that endeared her to fans, and Closer, a taught,
intimate drama that earned her massive critical accolades, as well as her first
Oscar nomination. In 2005, as the curtain finally closed on the Star Wars
franchise with the release of Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith,
Portman could be seen with a now iconic pixie haircut after shaving her head
for a role in the graphic-novel adaptation V for Vendetta. The dystopic action
thriller received mixed reviews, but Portman's performance, as usual, earned
accolades. Per her usual M.O. as an actress, she would complete a number of
independent, arthouse, or otherwise challenging projects for every blockbuster
under her belt, like the 2006 Milos Forman directed period drama Goya's Ghosts,
and the Wes Anderson 2007 road (or rather, train) movie The Darjeeling Limited.
After appearing opposite Scarlett Johansson and Eric Bana as Anne Boleyn, the
famously beheaded wife of King Henry VII in the 2008 period drama The Other
Boleyn Girl, Portman turned her high-brow image on its ear the very next year,
playing a small town cheerleader turned army wife in the Iraq War drama
Brothers. Portman had even more impressive turns awaiting her, however, as 2010
brought the lead role in the hallucinatory Darren Aronofsky film The Black
Swan, about an obsessively diligent ballerina who, in order to play both the
innocent and dark sides of femininity with the leading role in Swan Lake, must
battle her own conflicting inner demons as a woman. Portman trained in ballet
rigorously for six months to perform the role, and her efforts paid dividends.
Her performance received massive adoration from critics and audiences alike,
and she emerged with an Academy Award for Best Actress - which Portman accepted
while five months pregnant with a baby she was expecting with fiancé Benjamin
Millepied, her choreographer whom she met while filming.Professionally, Portman
had a mind to keep a balance with her choice of roles. In a change of pace from
the gritty material in The Black Swan, she appeared in the stoner comedy Your
Highness, the rom-com No Strings Attached, and the comic-book action thriller
Thor.Portman had her first child with husband Benjamin Millepied in June of
2011.
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