Natalie Portman Biography

Actor

Name at birth: Natalie Hershlag

Natalie Portman is best known as Queen Amidala in the George Lucas film Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999). Portman made her mark as a coming-of-age actress in the mid-1990s, co-starring in The Professional (1994), Heat (1995, with Al Pacino) and Mars Attacks (1996, with Jack Nicholson). Her talent landed her in Woody Allen's movie Everyone Says I Love You (1996) and on Broadway starring as Anne Frank in a 1997 revival of The Diary of Anne Frank. The year Portman portrayed Amidala she began undergraduate studies at Harvard University; she graduated in 2003. Her other films include the Star Wars sequels Attack of the Clones (2002) and Revenge of the Sith (2005), the Zach Braff feature Garden State (2004), the adult drama Closer (2004, with Clive Owen), V for Vendetta (2005, based on the comic book by Alan Moore), Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (2007, starring Dustin Hoffman), and The Other Boleyn Girl (2008, with Portman as Queen Anne Boleyn).

Extra credit: Portman, her screen name, is her grandmother's maiden name.

Natalie Portman appears with Carrie Fisher and Ewan McGregor in our loop on Star Wars.