She is an Academy Award winning actress and had her first major role as Queen Amidala in the Star Wars Trilogy, Natalie Portman, had set herself up very early on for a long and successful acting career.
Born in Jerusalem, her family emigrated from Israel to America. She is a graduate from Harvard, with a BA in Psychology.
Natalie Portman first appeared on the big screen at the age of 12, when she starred in the French action film “Leon” alongside Jean Reno.
This was the start of a wonderful career. In 1995 she appeared in “Heat” with Al Pacino and then “Mars Attacks” in 1996. In the same year she also starred in Wood Allen’s “Everyone Says I Love You” and played a major role in the film “Beautiful Girls”.
In 1998 she made her Broadway debut in the Off-Broadway production of the adaptation of “The Diary of Anne Franck”. The following year, the Director of the Star Wars Trilogy, George Lucas, offered her the role of Queen Amidala and in 1999 the first of the trilogy “Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace” was released.
In the same year Portman also had an appearance in the film “Anywhere by Here” and in 2000 appeared in “Where the Heart Is”. In 2001, she made a cameo appearance in the film “Zoolander”, alongside a host of other Hollywood stars.
In 2002 she starred in the second episode of the Star Wars trilogy, “Star Wars: Episode 2 - Attack of the Clones”.
However, it was in 2004 that she received real acclaim for her performance in the film “Closer”, in which she starred alongside Julia Roberts and Jude Law. She was nominated for an Oscar for “Best Supporting Actress”.
In 2005, the final episode of the Star Wars Trilogy was released. “Star Wars: Episode 3 - Revenge of the Sith” went on to be the biggest selling film of 2005. In the same year, Natalie Portman starred in controversial film “V For Vendetta”, where she plays a young woman, who is rescued from the secret police by a freedom fighter.
She took part in the film as she had grown up in Israel and had witnessed anti-government movements and terrorism as part of daily life.
Natalie Portman continued to impress in Hollywood, starring in the films “The Darjeeling Limited”(2007) and the historical drama, “The Other Boleyn Girl” (2008), in which she played Anne Boleyn, before landing the role that would see her become an Academy Award winning actress.
In 2010 she starred in Darren Aronofsky’s film “The Black Swan”, in which she played the character Nina Sayers, who lands the lead role in her theatre company’s version of Swan Lake, with the pressure of playing both the white swan and her darker side.
This causes her character to lose her mind, with disastrous consequences.
Her memorable and moving performance in the film earned her an Academy Award for “Best Actress”. With her mark permanently made in Hollywood her career can only go from strength to strength.
In her private life, Natalie Portman is engaged to Bejamin Millepied, a ballet dancer whom she met during the filming of “The Black Swan”. The couple have a son together, Aleph Portman-Millepied, who was born in 2011.
