Natalie Portman

Biography of Natalie Portman

Natalie Portman was born on June 9, 1981 in Jerusalem, Israel.

She is the only child of Shelley Stevens, an American housewife, and Avner Hershlag, an Israeli gynecologist.

Her maternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Austria and Russia; Her paternal grandparents, also Jewish, immigrated to Israel. Her paternal grandmother, Mania, from Romania, had the maiden name Portman.

In 2003, she graduated from Harvard University with an AB in Psychology. She returned to Israel and took graduate courses at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the spring of 2004. Additionally, she studied the French, Japanese, German, and Arabic languages.

She worked as a model after being discovered while eating at a pizzeria.

She made her film debut with Luc Besson in The Professional (1994).

Later she followed up with small roles in Heat, Everybody Says I Love You and she excelled in Beautiful Girls.

She got fame from her thanks to the Star Wars saga. Her role in The Phantom Menace and her sequels, as Queen Amidala, gave her career a strong boost.

In 2005, for her performance in Closer she was nominated for a Golden Globe for best supporting actress and nominated for an Oscar in the same category.

In February 2011, she was awarded an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Black Swan, in addition to receiving a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award and a BAFTA Award for the same film.

She starred in Paul McCartney's music video for "My Valentine" in April 2012. In the same year she shot Jane Got a Gun, released in 2015.

In July 2013, she announced that she would direct A Tale of Love and Darkness, an adaptation of Israeli Amos Oz's autobiographical novel.

She stars in 2016 Jackie, by Chilean director Pablo Larrain, a biographical drama about the American first lady Jacqueline Kennedy. For her performance she received a SAG Award in addition to nominations for the Academy Award, the Golden Globe and the BAFTA Award for Best Actress.

In 2018, she starred in the sci-fi horror film Annihilation, and as a troubled pop star in the film Vox Lux, for which she received praise. In 2019 she appears in Avengers:Endgame.

She was related to actors Lukas Haas, Gael García Bernal, and Liron Levo, model Nathan Bogle, and singer Devendra Banhart.

In December 2010 it was announced that she was engaged to choreographer Benjamin Millepied, whom she met while filming Black Swan. They were parents on June 14, 2011 of Aleph, and of Amalia on February 22, 2017.

They decided to say yes I do and celebrated their wedding in absolute privacy on August 4, 2012 in a Jewish ceremony at a private residence near Big Sur (California).