Natalie Portman

Natalie Portman was born Natalie Hershlag on June 9, 1981, in Jerusalem, Israel.[1] Her maternal ancestors were Jewish immigrants from Austria and Russia, while her paternal ancestors were Jews who had moved to Israel from Poland and Romania.[1] Her father, Avner, is an Israeli fertility specialist, and her mother, Shelley, was a homemaker from Cincinnati, Ohio, who also worked as Portman's agent.[1] The family relocated to the United States when Natalie was three years old because of her father's medical residency in Maryland; they later moved to Connecticut and settled on Long Island in 1990.[1]

From an early age, Portman showed a strong preference for performing over modeling. At age ten, she was approached by a Revlon scout who offered her a child modeling contract, but she declined in order to focus entirely on acting.[1] She spent summers at theater camps, where she took on roles including Dream Laurey in Oklahoma! and Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream.[1] She attended Syosset High School on Long Island, graduating in 1999, and subsequently enrolled at Harvard University, where she majored in psychology and graduated in 2005.[1] During her Harvard years she continued to act during school breaks.[1]

Portman adopted her grandmother's maiden name, Portman, as a stage name specifically to protect her privacy as a minor — a decision that reflected a conscious effort to separate her public persona from her family.[1] Hebrew was her first language, and she has continued to speak it fluently throughout her life, a connection that would later become central to her work as a filmmaker.[4]

Portman made her film debut in 1994, at age thirteen, playing Mathilda in Luc Besson's Léon: The Professional, filmed in New York and France.[1] The role of a desperate young girl befriended by a lonely hitman launched her career but also exposed her, at a very young age, to intense and sometimes disturbing public attention.[1] She subsequently appeared in Heat, Beautiful Girls, Everyone Says I Love You, and Mars Attacks!.[1] Demonstrating early discernment about her roles, she turned down the title part in Lolita because she believed young actors should not be exposed to sexual material at such an age, and she declined the role of Juliet in Romeo & Juliet because of the age difference between herself and Leonardo DiCaprio.[1]

After reading The Diary of Anne Frank and visiting the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, Portman rejected a supporting role in The Horse Whisperer and instead chose to make her Broadway debut as Anne Frank in the stage production of The Diary of Anne Frank.[1] The experience resonated with her family's history, and she later said: "Anne Frank's faith in humanity, even when she was starving and sick, had a huge impact on me."[1]

The role of Queen Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy — Episodes I, II, and III — brought Portman substantial international recognition and amounted to a ten-year professional commitment.[1] The Israeli Consulate General to the Mid-Atlantic identified her performance in the first installment, Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace (1999), as the role that made her widely known.[5] Even as her fame grew, she expressed concern that public interest was increasingly focused on her personal life rather than her craft, remarking: "People are becoming too interested in me as a person and not me as an actress."[1]

Following the Star Wars trilogy, Portman built a varied body of work spanning major studio productions and smaller dramatic films. Her supporting performance as Alice in Closer (2004) earned her first Academy Award nomination.[1] She subsequently appeared in Cold Mountain, Garden State, V for Vendetta, Goya's Ghosts, The Other Boleyn Girl, and No Strings Attached, as well as playing Jane Foster in Thor and Thor: The Dark World.[1] Her performance as Jacqueline Kennedy in Jackie (2016), directed by Pablo Larraín and covering the four days after John F. Kennedy's assassination, earned her a third Oscar nomination.[1][4]

Portman's performance in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan (2010) cast her as Nina Sayers, a New York City ballet dancer who wins the lead role in Swan Lake and struggles to embody both the White Swan and the Black Swan.[2] Nina's story is told through the lens of perfectionism, jealousy, hallucination, bodily transformation, and self-harm — a psychological and physical ordeal that required extensive preparation from its lead actress.[2]

Portman had studied ballet from age four to thirteen, giving her a strong foundation, but she trained for approximately a year for the role, devoting about five hours a day to ballet, swimming, and other physical conditioning.[2] She lost twenty pounds during the process and performed most of the ballet sequences herself.[2]

The film's choreography was created by Benjamin Millepied, a respected choreographer and principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, who worked with Aronofsky to select and stage the key sequences from Swan Lake before filming them on a real stage.[2] Sight & Sound called Portman's performance "game-changingly good" and said it carried the film's demanding physical and psychological requirements.[2] The film earned worldwide ticket sales of more than $200 million.[3] Portman won the Golden Globe for Best Actress for the role in January 2011 and the Academy Award for Best Actress on February 27, 2011.[1][6]

Portman's connection to Israel informed her choice of directorial subject. After describing reading Amos Oz's autobiographical 2002 memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness as a deeply personal experience — one she connected to her own family histories and to nostalgia for a country that might not be what one imagines — she spent roughly a decade developing a film adaptation.[7][4] Oz himself gave her permission to make an independent work rather than a literal adaptation, telling her: "Please make your own piece. Don't just film the book. Make something that is from you. Make your own creation."[7]

The resulting film, released in 2015, was Portman's feature directorial debut; she also wrote the screenplay and played Oz's mother, Fania, in the Hebrew-language production.[7] The story follows Oz's youth during the founding years of the State of Israel, and Portman noted that it mirrored her own family history: her paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants to pre-state Israel, while other relatives perished in the Holocaust.[7] She described the Jerusalem premiere as a homecoming and spoke Hebrew — fluently, though with a noticeable accent — at the event.[7]

In discussing the project, Portman reflected that being Israeli meant being treated as a representative of one's people, a responsibility she discussed in connection with the film.[7] She also used the film's release to speak about gender inequality in the film industry, describing the situation as "completely imbalanced" and noting that women-directed films were routinely dismissed as "vanity projects."[4] Portman had previously directed Eve, a short film released in 2008.[1] In March 2021, she and producing partner Sophie Mas founded MountainA, which signed a first-look television deal with Apple TV+.[1]

On the personal side, Portman met French ballet dancer and Black Swan choreographer Benjamin Millepied in late 2009 during production of the film, and the two have two children together.[1] She became one of Dior's faces in 2010 and served as an Ambassador of Hope for the Foundation for International Community Assistance, an organization that provides small loans to women in developing countries to start businesses.[1][8] A vegetarian since childhood, she became vegan in 2009.[1]

Portman's Jewish and Israeli identity has been a consistent presence throughout her life and career. Born in Jerusalem to parents of Jewish heritage spanning Poland, Romania, Austria, and Russia, she emigrated to the United States as a toddler but maintained her Hebrew fluency and has consistently spoken about the ways in which her origins shaped her outlook.[1] She has said she felt more Jewish when in Israel and has expressed a desire to raise her children Jewish, while emphasizing that having a good and supportive partner is the more fundamental consideration.[1]

Her acting choices have at times been directly inflected by her Israeli background. Explaining her interest in V for Vendetta — a film centrally concerned with political violence and state power — she noted that "terrorism and violence are such a daily part of my conversations since I was little," a consequence of growing up as an Israeli.[1] The Anne Frank connection went beyond historical interest: visiting the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam prompted a career decision, and she linked the experience to the resonance of her own family's history.[1]

Portman is included among sixty-one prominent Jews featured in Abigail Pogrebin's 2005 book Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish, a collection of intimate conversations about Jewish identity, religion, and prejudice.[9] She has drawn a distinction between criticism of Israeli government policy and rejection of Israel itself, stating explicitly that she does not support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement: "I treasure my Israeli friends and family, Israeli food, books, art, cinema, and dance."[10]

When John Galliano, a fashion designer with whom Portman had a professional relationship as a Dior model, made antisemitic remarks, she responded publicly, saying she was "shocked and disgusted" and "would not be associated with Mr. Galliano."[8] The response was widely noted as an example of her willingness to act on her Jewish identity in professional contexts.

Portman has used her public platform to address issues of sexual harassment, gender inequality in the film industry, and animal welfare. At the 2018 Women's March in Los Angeles, she spoke about what she called "sexual terrorism" that she said began when she was thirteen, after the release of Léon: The Professional.[1] She described receiving her first fan letter, which was a rape fantasy, and recounted that a local radio station created a countdown to her eighteenth birthday — the age at which she would legally be able to consent to sex.[1] The speech gave a direct account of the sexual objectification she experienced as a young actress.

She has also advocated for gender equity in Hollywood, characterizing the film industry as "completely imbalanced" and pushing back against the tendency to dismiss female-directed projects as vanity productions.[4] Her work as an Ambassador of Hope for the Foundation for International Community Assistance extended her advocacy to economic development, specifically supporting women entrepreneurs in developing countries through microloans.[1] Portman's commitment to animal welfare dates to childhood, when she became a vegetarian, and she extended that commitment by becoming vegan in 2009.[1]

Portman stands as one of the most prominent Israeli-born figures in international cinema. Her career trajectory — from a Jerusalem-born child who emigrated at age three to an Academy Award–winning actress and director — has made her a cultural touchstone both in Israel and in the broader Jewish world.[5][1] The Israeli Consulate General to the Mid-Atlantic has highlighted her as a representative of Israeli achievement in Hollywood, listing her alongside other Israelis who have built major careers in the American film industry.[5]

Her decision to direct A Tale of Love and Darkness entirely in Hebrew, drawing on Israeli literary culture and her own family's history in the land, reflects a sustained engagement with her origins that goes beyond the biographical fact of her birthplace.[7] Amos Oz's instruction that she create an independent work rather than film the book literally demonstrated his support for her creative independence.[7]

Portman completed a psychology degree at Harvard while continuing to act during school breaks.[1] Her inclusion among the prominent Jews interviewed in Stars of David also placed her within a broader cultural conversation about Jewish identity among public figures.[9]

At the 2018 Women's March, her speech about sexual objectification beginning at age thirteen drew attention to the wider #MeToo-era reckoning in Hollywood through a specific personal account.[1] Her founding of MountainA and its first-look deal with Apple TV+ signals a continued ambition to shape the kinds of stories that reach audiences, both as a performer and as a producer.[1]

The most widely discussed controversy of Portman's public life arose from her decision regarding the 2018 Genesis Prize. Announced in 2017 as the recipient of the award — sometimes called the "Jewish Nobel" and carrying prize money of $2 million — she subsequently said she would not attend the Israeli ceremony.[11][1] She later clarified her reason: "I chose not to attend because I did not want to appear as endorsing Benjamin Netanyahu, who was to be giving a speech at the ceremony."[12] She also objected to the mischaracterization of her position in the press and asked that statements not originating directly from her not be treated as her own words.[12] The Genesis Prize Foundation subsequently canceled the ceremony, though it confirmed that the award itself would not be rescinded.[11] In the statement she issued, Portman was clear that she does not support BDS, writing that she could criticize Israel's leadership while still treasuring her connection to the country and its people.[10]

During the production of Free Zone, Portman and Israeli actor Aki Avni were confronted by ultra-Orthodox Jewish worshippers while filming a kissing scene beside the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Portman subsequently said that she did not want to offend anyone's beliefs, that filming there had been a mistake, and that the production relocated as soon as the scene caused offense.[13] A separate incident occurred when Portman filmed A Tale of Love and Darkness in Jerusalem's Nahlaot neighborhood: ultra-Orthodox residents protested that they had received insufficient warning and objected to filming near a local synagogue.[14] Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Rachel Azaria characterized the dispute as a tension between celebrating Jerusalem's diversity and efforts by extremist groups to prevent cultural activity.[14]

The question of how to label Portman's birthplace has also drawn public attention. Media organizations and databases — including IMDb — have at various times described her birthplace as "Jerusalem, Palestine," a formulation that HonestReporting and others contested as politically loaded and historically inaccurate.[15] After contact from HonestReporting, the Daily Mail changed a reference to the "State of Palestine" so that it instead referred to "Palestinians."[16] Portman was born in Jerusalem, Israel, and has consistently identified as Israeli.[1]

The Jewish Review of Books offered a strongly negative assessment of Portman's film adaptation of A Tale of Love and Darkness, characterizing it as a "cinematic misadventure" that "sank quickly after a few film festival showings."[17] This was the reviewer's critical judgment rather than a settled factual conclusion.