Natalie Portman Trivia: 62 interesting facts about the actress!

Natalie Portman is an actress, producer and director with dual American and Israeli citizenship. Her first role was in the 1994 action thriller Léon: The Professional, opposite Jean Reno. She was later cast as Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (released in 1999, 2002 and 2005).

Let’s see some interesting facts about her!

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

2. Her original given name was Neta-Lee, a Hebrew name.

3. She is the only child of Shelley, an American homemaker who works as Portman’s agent, and Avner Hershlag, an Israeli fertility specialist and gynecologist.

4. Her maternal grandparents, Bernice and Arthur Stevens, were from Jewish families who moved to the United States from Austria and Russia.

5. Natalie’s paternal grandparents, Mania and Zvi Yehuda Hershlag, were Jewish immigrants to Israel.

6. Zvi, born in Poland in 1914, moved to what was then Mandatory Palestine in 1938 and eventually became an economics professor; his parents died at Auschwitz. One of Natalie’s paternal great-grandmothers was born in Romania and was a spy for British Intelligence during World War II.

7. 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.

8. In 1984, when Portman was three years old, the family moved to the United States, where her father received his medical training.

9. Portman, a dual citizen of the United States and Israel, has said that although she “really love[s] the States… my heart’s in Jerusalem. That’s where I feel at home.”

10. Portman and her family first lived in Washington, D.C., but relocated to Connecticut in 1988 and then moved to Jericho, New York, on Long Island, in 1990.

11. While living in the Washington, D.C. area, Portman attended Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Maryland.

12. Portman learned to speak Hebrew while living on Long Island and attended a Jewish elementary school, the Solomon Schechter Day School of Nassau County in Jericho, New York.

13. She graduated from Syosset High School in Syosset, Long Island in 1999.

14. She studied ballet and modern dance at the American Theater Dance Workshop in New Hyde Park, New York, and attended the Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts in Wheatley Heights, both on Long Island.

15. Portman skipped the premiere of her film Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, so she could study for her high school final exams.

16. In 2003, Portman graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in psychology.

17. At Harvard, Portman was Alan Dershowitz’s research assistant.

18. While attending Harvard, she was a resident of Lowell House and wrote a letter to the Harvard Crimson in response to an essay critical of Israeli actions toward Palestinians.

19. Portman returned to Israel and took graduate courses at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the spring of 2004.

20. In March 2006, she was a guest lecturer at a Columbia University course in terrorism and counterterrorism, where she spoke about her film V for Vendetta.

21. Portman has professed an interest in foreign languages since childhood and has studied French, Japanese, German, and Arabic.

22. As a student, Portman co-authored two research papers that were published in scientific journals.

23. Her 1998 high school paper, “A Simple Method to Demonstrate the Enzymatic Production of Hydrogen from Sugar,” co-authored with scientists Ian Hurley and Jonathan Woodward, was entered in the Intel Science Talent Search.

24. In 2002, she contributed to a study on memory called “Frontal lobe activation during object permanence: data from near-infrared spectroscopy” during her psychology studies at Harvard.

24. As a consequence of both her academic and acting careers, Portman has an Erdős–Bacon number of 7.

25. On school holidays, Portman attended theater camps. When she was 10, Portman auditioned for the 1992 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.

26. In 1993, she auditioned for the role of an orphan child who befriends a middle-aged hitman (played by Jean Reno) in Luc Besson’s film, Léon: The Professional. Soon after getting the part, she took her paternal grandmother’s maiden name, “Portman”, as her stage name in the interest of privacy and to protect her family’s identity.[

27. Léon: The Professional opened in 1994, marking her feature film debut.

28. During the mid-1990s, Portman had several film roles, including Heat, Everyone Says I Love You, and Mars Attacks!. Her performance in the small ensemble film Beautiful Girls garnered significant acclaim.

29. She was the first choice to play Juliet in William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, but producers felt her age wasn’t suitable. In 1997, Portman played the role of Anne Frank in a Broadway adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank.

30. It was after 1996’s Beautiful Girls that Portman grew reticent to accept roles where her character was a sexualized youngster.

31. Also in 1997, Portman was cast as Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. The first film, The Phantom Menace, began filming in June 1997 and opened in May 1999.

32. After filming Where the Heart Is, Portman moved into the dorms of Harvard University to pursue her bachelor’s degree in psychology.

33. During the summer break from June to September 2000, Portman filmed Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones in Sydney, along with additional production in London.

34. In July 2001, Portman opened in New York City’s Public Theater production of Chekhov’s The Seagull, directed by Mike Nichols; she played the role of Nina alongside Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

35. In 2004, Portman appeared in the independent movies Garden State and Closer. Garden State was an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival and won Best First Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards. Her performance as Alice in Closer earned her a Supporting Actress Golden Globe as well as a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

36. The final Star Wars prequel, Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, was released on May 19, 2005. The film was the highest grossing domestic film of that year and was voted Favorite Motion Picture at the People’s Choice Awards.

37. V for Vendetta opened in early 2006. Portman worked with a voice coach for the role, learning to speak with an English accent, and she famously had her head shaved.

38. She appeared in Paul McCartney’s music video “Dance Tonight” from his 2007 album Memory Almost Full, directed by Michel Gondry.

39. Portman played a young ballerina in Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 film Black Swan, a role of which critic Kurt Loder wrote: “Portman gives one of her most compelling performances in this film, which is saying something.”

40. To prepare for the role, she went through five to eight hours of dance training each day for six months and lost 20 pounds (9 kg). In 2011, she won the Golden Globe Award, the Academy Award for Best Actress, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role.

41. After Portman’s Oscar win, controversy arose over who performed the bulk of the on-screen dancing in Black Swan.

42. Portman co-starred in the 2011 film No Strings Attached, alongside Ashton Kutcher.

43. She then starred in Your Highness, opposite James Franco and Danny McBride, and also played the role of Jane Foster in Kenneth Branagh’s superhero film adaptation Thor and reprised the role in Thor: The Dark World.

44. In 2010, Portman dropped out of the lead role of Elizabeth Bennet in the novel adaptation, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but served as producer of the finished film, which was released in 2016.

45. In July 2013, Portman announced she had chosen an adaptation of Israeli author Amos Oz’s autobiographical novel A Tale of Love and Darkness as her directorial feature debut. Portman also starred in the film and was a co-writer on the script. A Tale of Love and Darkness premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

46. In May 2015, Portman signed on to play the title role in director Pablo Larrain’s Jackie, a biographical drama about 1960s American First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy following the death of her husband, President John F. Kennedy. For this role she was nominated for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.[5] [6]

47. On November 6, 2016, she appeared at the 20th Annual Hollywood Film Awards.

48. In May 2008, Portman served as the youngest member of the 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival jury.

49. In 2006, she commented that she felt more Jewish in Israel and that she would like to raise her children Jewish: “A priority for me is definitely that I’d like to raise my kids Jewish, but the ultimate thing is to have someone who is a good person and who is a partner.”

50. After Portman starred in the video for folk singer Devendra Banhart’s song “Carmensita”, the two began a relationship, which ended in September 2008.

51. Portman began dating ballet dancer Benjamin Millepied in 2009. The couple met while she was filming Black Swan, for which he was the choreographer.

52. In December 2010, Portman announced their engagement and confirmed her pregnancy. Portman gave birth to their son Aleph Portman-Millepied on June 14, 2011.

53. In February 2012, Portman and Millepied were photographed wearing wedding rings at the Academy Awards ceremony, but representatives did not respond to requests for comment on the couple’s marital status. On August 4, 2012, Portman and Millepied married in an intimate Jewish ceremony in Big Sur, California.

54. In January 2013, the Paris Opera Ballet announced that Millepied had accepted the position of director of dance, beginning September 2014. The couple subsequently announced plans to relocate to Paris. Portman said she would like to become a French citizen.

55. Millepied said in January 2014 he was in the process of converting to Judaism.

56. In 2016, the family moved from Paris to Los Angeles.

57. In September 2016, it was announced that Portman and Millepied were expecting their second child.

58. Natalie received several injuries on the set of Black Swan. The most famous, as it was included in the film, was a rib injury. Natalie had injured her ankle and, because the production could not afford a medic on set, the boom mic operator offered to help. After several minutes of jabbing Natalie in the stomach, Natalie instructed everyone that her rib was now injured. She did, however, admit that her ankle was feeling a lot better.

59. Her favorite color is green.

60. Natalie Portman’s net worth is $45 million.

61. Although she was already a vegetarian, she decided to become vegan in 2009.

62. She is close friends with Jake Gyllenhaal, Mila Kunis and Bryce Dallas Howard.