Laura: Natalie Portman early life top

Natalie Hershlag; born June 9, 1981 , better known by her stage name Natalie Portman, is an Israeli-American actress. Her first role was as an orphan taken in by a hitman in the 1994 French action film Léon. During the 1990s, Portman had major roles in films like Beautiful Girls and Anywhere but Here, before being cast for the role as Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. In 1999, she enrolled at Harvard University to study psychology while she was working on the Star Wars films She completed her bachelor's degree in 2003.
In 2001, Portman opened in New York City's Public Theater production of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, alongside Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and Philip Seymour Hoffman.In 2005, Portman received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as well as winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture for the drama Closer. She shaved her head and learned to speak with a British accent for her starring role in V for Vendetta 2006 , for which she won a Constellation Award for Best Female Performance, and a Saturn Award for Best Actress. She played leading roles in the historical dramas Goya's Ghosts 2006 and The Other Boleyn Girl 2008 . In May 2008, she served as the youngest member of the 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival jury.Portman's directorial debut, Eve, opened the 65th Venice International Film Festival's shorts competition in 2008
In 2011, Portman won the Golden Globe award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role for her performance in Black Swan. She is currently engaged to ballet dancer Benjamin Millepied, and the couple is expecting their first child
Contents
* 1 Early life
* 2 Education
* 3 Career
o 3.1 Early work
o 3.2 1995–1999
o 3.3 2000–2005
o 3.4 2006–2009
o 3.5 2010–present
* 4 Social and political causes
* 5 Personal life
* 6 Filmography
* 7 Awards
o 7.1 Won
o 7.2 Nominations
* 8 References
* 9 External links
Early life
Portman was born in Jerusalem, IsraelHer father, Avner Hershlag, is a fertility specialist mother, Shelley Hershlag an American homemaker who works as her agent.Portman's maternal ancestors were Jewish immigrants from Austria and Russia, and her paternal ancestors were Jews who moved to Israel from Poland and Romania. Her paternal grandfather, whose parents died at Auschwitz, was an economics professor in Israel, and her Romanian-born great-grandmother was a spy for British Intelligence during World War
Portman's parents met at a Jewish student center at Ohio State University, where her mother was selling tickets. They corresponded after her father returned to Israel, and were married when her mother visited a few years later. In 1984, when Portman was three years old, the family moved to the United States, where her father received his medical training. The family first lived in Washington, D.C., where Portman attended Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, but relocated to Connecticut in 1988, and then settled on Long Island, New York, in 1990 She attended Syosset High School in Syosset, Long Island.Portman has said that although she "really lov the States... my heart's in Jerusalem. That's where I feel at home."Portman is a dual citizen of the United States and IsraelShe is an only child and very close to her parents who are often seen with her at her film premieres.Education
Portman learned to speak Hebrew addition to English and attended a Jewish elementary school, the Solomon Schechter Day School of Glen Cove, New York She graduated from the public Syosset High School in 1999 skipped the premiere of Star Wars: Episode I so she could study for her high school final exams
On June 5, 2003, Portman graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in psychology. "I don't care if ruins my career," she told the New York Post, according to a Fox News article. "I'd rather be smart than a movie starAt Harvard, Portman was Alan Dershowitz's research assistant[in a psychology lab. While attending Harvard, she was a resident of Lowell Houseand wrote a letter to the Harvard Crimson in response to an essay critical of Israeli actions towards Palestinians.
Portman took graduate courses at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the spring of 2004. In March 2006, she appeared as a guest lecturer at a Columbia University course in terrorism and counterterrorism, where she spoke about her film V for Vendetta
Portman has professed an interest in foreign languages since childhood and has studied French, German Arabic
As a student, Portman co-authored two research papers that were published in professional scientific journals. Her 1998 high school paper, "A Simple Method To Demonstrate the Enzymatic Production of Hydrogen from Sugar," was entered in the Intel Science Talent Search, in which she was named a semifinalistIn 2002, she contributed to a study on memory called "Frontal Lobe Activation During Object Permanence" during her psychology studies at Harvard.
ue to her scientific publications, Portman is among a very small number of professional actors with a finite Erdős–Bacon number, a concept that reflects the "small world phenomenon" in academia and entertainment by measuring the "collaborative distance" between that person and Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős—and the number of links, through roles in films, by which the individual is separated from American actor Kevin Bac
Career
Early work
Portman started dancing lessons at age fou and performed in local troupes. At the age of 10, a Revlon agent asked her to become a child model but she turned down the offer to focus on acting. In a magazine interview, Portman said that she was "different from the other kids. I was more ambitious, I knew what I liked and what I wanted, and I worked very hard. I was a very serious kid.
Portman spent her school holidays attending theater camps. When she was 10, she auditioned for the Off-Broadway show Ruthless!, a musical about a girl who is prepared to commit murder to get the lead in a school play. Portman and future pop star Britney Spears were chosen as the understudies for star Laura Bell Bundy. In 1994, she auditioned for the role of a child who befriends a middle-aged hitman in Luc Besson's film, Léon aka The Professional . Soon after getting the part, she took her grandmother's maiden name "Portman" as her stage name, in the interest of privacy and to protect her family's identity. Léon opened on November 18, 1994, marking her feature film debut at age 13. That same year she appeared in the short film Developing, which aired on television.
1995–1999
During the mid-1990s, Portman had roles in the films Heat, Everyone Says I Love You, and Mars Attacks!, as well as a major role in Beautiful Girls.She was the first choice to play Juliet in William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, but producers felt her age wasn't suitable. 1997, Portman played the role of Anne Frank in a Broadway adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank.
She initially turned down the lead role in the film Anywhere but Here after learning it would involve a sex scene, but director Wayne Wang and actress Susan Sarandon demanded a rewrite of the script; Portman was shown a new draft, and she decided to be in the filmThe film opened in late 1999, and she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Ann August.Critic Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon called Portman "astonishing" and said that nlike any number of actresses her age, she's neither too maudlin nor too plucky. In the late 1990s, Portman was cast as Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. The first part, The Phantom Menace, opened in early 1999. then signed on to play the lead role of a teenaged mother in Where the Heart Is.

Natalie Portman