As The New York Times reported, the former child star adopted the surname "Portman" from her paternal grandmother's maiden name. Evidently, as she continued to find fame and fortune in Hollywood, Portman decided to keep this stage name. It's no secret that Natalie Portman is an exceptionally smart and talented individual. In addition to all her achievements in her professional career, she is also reportedly a polyglot. Here is a clip of Portman speaking Hebrew in an interview for one of her movies.
Starting at age four, Natalie Portman took ballet lessons — as well as modern dance — at the American Theater Dance Workshop. This early training would later come in handy when she starred in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan , for which she won Best Actress at the Oscars, though there was some controversy about the dancing in Black Swan. Namely, there was some dispute regarding how much of Portman's performance belonged to her and how much of it belonged to professional ballet dancer Sarah Lane.
There is a scene where Portman's face is digitally imposed onto Lane's body, but some people believed that Lane's role in Black Swan was being downplayed during awards season. The filmmakers later claimed that Portman did most of her own dancing. If you were a star in one of the biggest, most anticipated movie events of all-time, you would think that you'd drop everything and attend the premiere.
But, reportedly, that wasn't the case for Natalie Portman. The actress, who played Queen Padme Amidala in the blockbuster, was still in high school at the time, and she allegedly opted not to attend the movie's premiere to instead study for her final exams.
As a well-educated woman, Portman has often put her studies first. She attended Harvard University from to to study psychology and returned to give the commencement speech. In an interview, Portman was quoted saying she didn't care if college ruined her acting career. She'd "rather be smart than a movie star. Normally, you would think that any actor or actress who finally won a coveted Oscar would guard the gold statue with their life. Indeed, while there might be some actors who follow that principle, that doesn't appear to be the case for Natalie Portman.
As she noted in a interview, she doesn't know exactly where her Oscar went. In celebration of Portman's 39th birthday, CR takes a look at some little-known facts about the actress.
Portman holds dual citizenship in Israel and the U. She was born in Jerusalem to Jewish parents, and lived in Washington, D. A Revlon agent spotted a year-old Portman and asked her to sign as a child model, but she turned down the offer. However, she used the opportunity to get an acting agent, jumpstarting her career.
Her Hebrew birth name, Neta-Lee Hershlag, was changed to protect her privacy as a child actress. From a young age, Portman expressed an interest in foreign languages. Her training came in handy for her Oscar-winning performance in Black Swan She missed the premiere of her film Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace because she was studying for her high school final exam. I'd rather be smart than a movie star. Director of Anywhere But Here Wayne Wang even demanded a rewrite of the script to eliminate a sex scene after Portman initially turned down her leading role.
Her first-ever on-stage performance was as an understudy alongside a young Britney Spears for the off-Broadway musical Ruthless! One of the main reasons for her veganism is her support for animal rights. She graduated from Harvard University in with a B.
Then she got a phone call from Robin Gurland, a casting director working for Lucasfilm. Eventually she met with Lucas and producer Rick McCallum at the Skywalker farm outside San Francisco and after some time for reflection she signed a deal for all three movies.
First, because it places you in the limelight and pushes you into the public eye more than probably any other film could. Second, it was a huge commitment to make as a fourteen-year-old, to decide that I was going to be doing three films in the next ten years.
So I really thought about it a lot and weighed my considerations and talked to all the people I love and trust before I made my decision. I get to have the romance, and then having kids… always playing my age. I did it and I hated it. It was so boring! So not stimulating. The photographs shot by Dewey Nicks fueled constant comparisons with Audrey Hepburn. I have this strong feeling that she is going to be a legend. But after he had met them he understood their motivation. I think her parents are doing everything right.
She was an absolute dream to work with. But even if it looks as if there was always sunshine in her movie life, here and there some critical remarks came to the surface. Natalie politely refused to tell any names, though.
People have wanted me to break the law by overworking. Breaking child labour laws means they lose less money. But those are laws for a reason. On her fifteenth birthday she was in Hollywood, and spent four hours putting in an appearance at an AIDS charity event. Her summer she spent at theater camp in the Catskills.
Because of all the other famous people in these films, she remained in the background, though. In the middle of June the first scenes were shot in London, then in July the crew went to Italy for two weeks and to Tunisia for three weeks.
And Jake was only eight. Until then she had been living there alone with her mother. But not only had she the troubles every adolescent goes through, her work as an actress changed as well. Still she enjoyed shooting the film.
All the actors are so nice. Ahmed Best is awesome. Ewan McGregor is so cool. Jake Lloyd is the cutest kid, and Liam Neeson is the best guy. And George is an amazing person, really nice and intelligent and a great director. He is so efficient, and the crew is awesome. The crew was so cool. School days, I wake up at , leave for school at , go to English class, physics and gym. Then, at , a car picks me up at school and drives me to Manhattan a one-hour drive.
Rehearsal begins at We break for lunch from to , and during that time I am tutored in one of the classes that I have missed at school: history, French, math or Japanese. Rehearsal ends by PM, and I get tutored again from to On weekends, I get tutored before and after work both Saturday and Sunday.
A car drives me home each day, and I go to sleep. After a month of rehearsal, I will leave for Boston where we will open the show, fix it if necessary, and basically prepare for New York City. We will open in December in New York and perform eight shows a week. We will have Mondays off and do two shows on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
I will finish playing Anne Frank toward the end of the school year. If my schedule sounds hectic, it is. I go out with my friends at least one night a week, and that maintains my energy because I feel then that I have balanced work, school and play. I have the greatest friends in the world. I was living with my mother; my father was working, so he only visited every other weekend. I became so entwined in her writing that I did nothing else for the next week until I finished it.
I got yelled at all the time. Their family had already experienced a lot of anti-Semitism, and this was the final straw that made them go into hiding. While there, Anne kept a diary, documenting not only the progression of the war, but also her feelings about life, love and maturation.
It made me feel as if someone understood me. At the end, the family and the other people they hid with were caught and sent to concentration camps. This horrific ending brings even more meaning to her diary. Her faith in humanity, even when she was starving and sick in the attic — all because she was Jewish — had a huge influence on me.
She believed in good and she believed that people were good at heart, even when everything pointed in the other direction. I decided to do this play because I am truly convinced that people need to be constantly reminded of compassion. We have starving people, war-torn countries and children who will not have the chance to change the world as they should.
This sounds cliched and idealistic, I know, but it really is what the world is like, and people must remember that. I also have a personal attachment to the play because my great-grandparents, my great-uncle and several other family members were murdered by the Nazis during World War II. I think that the world must acknowledge and understand how useless hatred and racism are, and fight against these problems.
Every time I hear a racist, an anti-Semitic or any other hateful slur, I am reminded that people have not yet learned. We will soon perform the play and spread the message to our audiences — we hope.
It is the least I can do in tribute to Anne Frank, who has helped me become a better human being. Listen Now. She also doesn't like when her family call her by her stage name. Lea Michele, real name Lea Michele Sarfati. Natalie Portman, real name Neta-Lee Hershlag. She chose Portman because it's her paternal grandmother's maiden name. Gigi Hadid, real name Jelena Noura Hadid. Olivia Wilde, real name Olivia Jane Cockburn.
Nina Dobrev, real name Nikolina Kamenova Dobreva. She ended up shortening both her first and last name when she started her acting career. Feature Image: Getty. Sign up to the Spill.
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