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Jessica Alba Anne Hathaway
Natalie Portman - Goddesses of the Silver Screen
323    Dibyendu Banerjee    02/10/2024

Born Natalie Hershlag on 9 June 1981, in Jerusalem, Israel, Natalie Portman, an Israeli-born American actress, the only child of Avner Hershlag, an Israeli-born doctor, and Shelley Stevens, an American homemaker, is the first female actor born during the 1980s to win the Academy Award for Best Actress. The family left Israel for Washington, DC in 1984, when Natalie was only three, but subsequently shifted to Connecticut in 1988, and finally settled in Syosset, Long Island, New York, where Natalie attended a Jewish elementary school, the Solomon Schechter Day School of Nassau County.

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After completing her school life, she graduated from Harvard in Psychology in 2003, and in the same year, appeared in a brief role in the war film Cold Mountain, starring Jude Law and Nicole Kidman. However, apart from her studies, she also attended the American Theater Dance Workshop for learning ballet and modern dance.

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In those early days of her life, Natalie was a very serious girl, ambitious, and unlike other girls of her age, she was aware of her liking and disliking. In her early teens, she was spotted by an agent in a pizza parlour and was approached to become a child model, which she bluntly refused, as she wanted to pursue her career as an actor, but used the opportunity to get an acting agent. At the tender age of 13, she auditioned and secured the leading role in Luc Besson’s crime-action drama film Léon (The Professional 1994), starring opposite the French actor Jean Reno, to play the role of Matilda, an adolescent orphan girl, who took the help of a professional gunman to be trained as a skilled shooter to take revenge for the brutal murder of her parents.

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Although Natalie was ready to take the challenge, initially her parents were reluctant about her playing the role due to the explicit sex and violence in the content, but finally they agreed, after Besson took out the nudity and killing from the character of Matilda. However, despite the assurance, Natalie preferred to use her maternal grandmother’s last name Portman, instead of Hershlag, as an additional safety measure to avoid public gossip and protection from any possible unwanted public attention due to the erotic implications attached in the character of Matilda. Eventually, Natalie made a powerful debut in the film and was praised by Hal Hinson of The Washington Post for bringing a real sense of tragedy to her part, but Besson was strongly criticised for the sexualization of her character.

natalie portman
Natalie in Léon (1995)

Following her success in the role of Matilda, Natalie won roles in several films and appeared in the small role of Lauren Gustafson, a troubled teenager, stepdaughter of Lieutenant Vincent Hanna, played by Al Pacino, in Heat (1995), played the role of Marty, a precocious teenager flirting with her much-older neighbour, appeared in the ensemble comedy-drama Beautiful Girls (1996), and also portrayed the role of Taffe Dale, in Tim Burton’s comic alien-invasion film Mars Attacks !(1996). However, Natalie received worldwide fame for her performance as the elaborately costumed Queen Amidala, in the first film of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999), which marked her first big-budget production. Shooting of the film in different gruelling locations in Algeria proved to be a challenging task for Natalie, but it established her as a global star, despite its mixed critical response.

natalie portman
Heat 1995

Although Natalie initially turned down the proposal to accept the role of Ann August, the lead role in the coming-of-age film Any where But Here (1999), as it would involve a sex scene, she agreed to accept it after the script was rewritten at the instance of Wayne Wang, the director of the film and Susan Sarandon, who played the role of the mother of Ann’s character.

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The film was a major turning point in her career, as she earned a nomination for Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role.

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With Susan Sarandon in Anywhere But Here 1999

Her only screen appearance in 2000 was a romantic film, Where the Heart Is (2000), in which she appeared as Novalee Nation, a pregnant teenager abandoned by her boyfriend, and after completion of the project, she significantly reduced her acting roles over the next few years to attend Harvard University for her bachelor's degree in psychology. However, she reprised her role of Amidala in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002), during her summer break of 2000, and graduated from Harvard in 2003, in which year she only appeared briefly as young mother in the epic period drama film Cold Mountain (2003).

natalie portman
Natalie Portman in Where Heart Is 2000

The next year, Natalie featured in the romantic comedy Garden State (2004), playing Sam, a spirited young girl suffering from epilepsy, followed by playing a mysterious stripper in Closer (2004), her first sexually explicit adult role, co-starring Julia Roberts and Jude Law. For her blazing and breakthrough performance in the film, as depicted by film critic Peter Travers, she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and also earn a nomination for Academy Award in the same category. During the next year, she appeared in the fantasy film V for Vendetta (2005), playing the role of Evey, a revolutionary in a neo-fascist regime who was tortured and her head was shaved on camera, and also portrayed the role of Rebecca, a Jewish-American girl, in Free Zone (2005), which created controversy for her kissing scene near the Western Wall, the holiest place in Jerusalem, and was disliked by many for its heavy-handed approach to the conflicts in the Middle East. During the same year, Natalie also appeared in the final instalment of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005), which ranked as the second-largest-grossing film of the year. Her other films during the decade include Miloš Forman’s Goya’s Ghost (2006), in which she appeared as Ines, the muse of the Spanish painter Goya, My Blueberry Nights (2007), a romantic film directed by Wong Kar-Wai, the period film The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), playing the lead role of the doomed queen Anne Boleyn, and the psychological thriller war film Brother (2009), in which she appeared as Grace Cahill, wife of Marine Captain Sam Cahill.

natalie portman
Natalie Portman in Goya’s Ghost (2006)

During the next year, Natalie Portman perhaps played the most important role in her entire career when she appeared as the disturbed ballerina Nina Sayers, with the prospect of performing Swan Lake in the psychological thriller Black Swan (2010), for which she trained for five to eight hours daily for six months. She was profusely acclaimed for her performance in the film and earned several awards which included the Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, along with a BAFTA Award. Her films during the next year include the romantic comedy No Strings Attached (2011), playing the role of Emma opposite Ashton Kutcher as a young couple in a casual sex relationship, portraying Isabel, a warrior princess in the bawdy period comedy Your Highness (2011), and also appeared as Jane Foster, a scientist in the superhero action fantasy Thor (2011), which proved to be the 15th highest-grossing film of the year. Later, Natalie also appeared in two more sequels of the film series, Thor: The Dark World (2013), and Thor: Love and Thunder (2022).

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Natalie Port in Black Swan (2010)

Although initially hesitant and a bit sceptical, Natalie finally accepted the offer to play the role of Jacqueline Kennedy in the biopic Jackie (2016), directed by Pablo Larrain, about her life immediately after the assassination of her husband, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. However, Natalie prepared herself for the role by extensively researching about her life, reading books, watching videos, even listening audio tapes containing her interviews, for following her unique speaking style. For her portrayal of the role, Natalie received her second nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress and also won the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress. Her subsequent films include Vox Lux (2018) about a troubled pop singer, and the drama film May December (2023), for which she received another Golden Globe nomination.

natalie portman

In her personal life, Natalie Portman met Benjamin Millepied, a dancer and choreographer, during the filming of Black Swan and married him on 4 August 2012. Unfortunately, the marriage did not last long and after the birth of their children Aleph and Amalia, they were divorced on 8 March 2024.

Jessica Alba Anne Hathaway
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Author Details
Dibyendu Banerjee
Ex student of Scottish Church College. Served a Nationalised Bank for nearly 35 years. Authored novels in Bengali. Translated into Bengali novels/short stories of Leo Tolstoy, Eric Maria Remarque, D.H.Lawrence, Harold Robbins, Guy de Maupassant, Somerset Maugham and others. Also compiled collections of short stories from Africa and Third World. Interested in literature, history, music, sports and international films.
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