104 Facts About Natalie Portman

1.

Natalie Portman was born on Natalie Hershlag, Hebrew:, June 9,1981 and is an Israeli-born American actress.

2.

Natalie Portman has had a prolific film career since her teenage years and has starred in various blockbusters and independent films, receiving multiple accolades, including an Academy Award and two Golden Globe Awards.

3.

From 1999 to 2003, Natalie Portman attended Harvard University, graduating with a bachelor's degree in psychology.

4.

Natalie Portman reduced her number of acting roles, but continued to act in the Star Wars prequel trilogy and in The Public Theater's 2001 revival of Anton Chekhov's play The Seagull.

5.

In 2004, Natalie Portman was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and won a Golden Globe Award for playing a mysterious stripper in the romantic drama Closer.

6.

Natalie Portman went on to star in the romantic comedy No Strings Attached and portrayed Jacqueline Kennedy in the biopic Jackie, which earned her a third Academy Award nomination.

7.

Natalie Portman has featured as Jane Foster in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero films Thor, Thor: The Dark World, and Thor: Love and Thunder, which established her as one of the world's highest-paid actresses.

8.

Natalie Portman is vocal about the politics of the United States and Israel, and is an advocate for animal rights and environmental causes.

9.

Natalie Portman is married to dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied, with whom she has two children.

10.

Natalie Portman Hershlag was born on June 9,1981, in Jerusalem, to Jewish parents with roots in Poland, Austria, and Russia.

11.

Natalie Portman is the only child of Shelley, an American homemaker who works as Portman's agent, and Avner Hershlag, an Israeli-born gynecologist.

12.

Natalie Portman studied ballet and modern dance at the American Theater Dance Workshop, and regularly attended the Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts.

13.

When Natalie Portman was ten years old, a Revlon agent spotted her at a pizza restaurant and asked her to become a child model.

14.

Natalie Portman turned down the offer but used the opportunity to get an acting agent.

15.

Natalie Portman played Mathilda, an orphan child who befriends a middle-aged hitman.

16.

Natalie Portman herself said that after those scenes were removed, she found nothing objectionable about the content.

17.

Natalie Portman enrolled at the Stagedoor Manor performing arts camp, where she played Anne Shirley in a staging of Anne of Green Gables.

18.

Natalie Portman was cast opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, but she dropped out during rehearsals when studio executives found her too young for the role.

19.

Luhrmann said "Natalie Portman was amazing in the footage, but it was too much of a burden for her at that age".

20.

Natalie Portman instead signed on to star as Anne Frank in a Broadway adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank, which was staged at the Music Box Theatre from December 1997 to May 1998.

21.

Natalie Portman began filming the part of Padme Amidala in the Star Wars prequel trilogy in 1997, which marked her first big-budget production.

22.

Natalie Portman was unfamiliar with the franchise when she was cast, and watched the original Star Wars trilogy before filming began.

23.

Natalie Portman worked closely with the director George Lucas on her character's accent and mannerisms, and watched the films of Lauren Bacall, Audrey Hepburn, and Katharine Hepburn to draw inspiration from their voice and stature.

24.

Natalie Portman did not attend the film's premiere so she could study for her high school finals.

25.

Natalie Portman was shown a new draft, and decided to accept the part.

26.

Natalie Portman received a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress nomination for it.

27.

Natalie Portman's sole screen appearance in 2000 was in Where the Heart Is, a romantic drama filmed in Texas, in which she played a pregnant teenager.

28.

Natalie Portman studied advanced Hebrew literature and neurobiology, and she served as Alan Dershowitz's research assistant.

29.

Also in 2001, Natalie Portman was among several celebrities who made cameo appearances in the comedy Zoolander.

30.

Natalie Portman was excited by the opportunity to play a confident young woman who did not depend on the male lead.

31.

Natalie Portman graduated from Harvard in 2003 and her sole screen appearance that year was in the brief part of a young mother in the war film Cold Mountain.

32.

Natalie Portman began 2004 by featuring in the romantic comedy Garden State, which was written and directed by its star Zach Braff.

33.

Natalie Portman was the first actor to sign on to the film after finding a connection with her part: a spirited young girl suffering from epilepsy.

34.

Natalie Portman later said she found it upsetting to have contributed to the trope.

35.

Natalie Portman followed it by playing a mysterious stripper in Closer, a romantic drama directed by Mike Nichols based on the play of the same name, and co-starring Julia Roberts, Jude Law, and Clive Owen.

36.

Natalie Portman had performed her first nude scenes for the film, but they were deleted from the final cut when she insisted that they were inessential to the story.

37.

Natalie Portman next played a Jewish-American girl in Free Zone, a drama from Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai.

38.

Natalie Portman was drawn to the provocative nature of the script, and worked with a dialect coach to speak in an English accent.

39.

Natalie Portman began 2006 by hosting an episode of the television sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live.

40.

One of her sketches, a song named "Natalie Portman's Rap", was released later in 2009 on Incredibad, an album by the Lonely Island.

41.

Natalie Portman insisted on using a body double for her nude scenes after discovering on set that she had to perform them when they were not originally in the script.

42.

Natalie Portman began 2007 by replacing Jodie Foster in Wong Kar-wai's romantic drama My Blueberry Nights, which was his first English-language film.

43.

Keen to work in different genres, Natalie Portman accepted a role in the children's film Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium, playing an employee of a magical toy store.

44.

Natalie Portman appeared in Paul McCartney's music video "Dance Tonight" from his album Memory Almost Full, directed by Michel Gondry.

45.

Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman portrayed rival sisters Mary and Anne Boleyn, respectively, in the period film The Other Boleyn Girl.

46.

Natalie Portman was excited by the opportunity to work opposite another actress her age, bemoaning that such casting was rare in film.

47.

Natalie Portman served as a jury member of the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and launched her own production company, named handsomecharlie films, after her late dog.

48.

Natalie Portman appeared in a faux perfume commercial called Greed, directed by Roman Polanski, and in the anthology film New York, I Love You, she directed a segment and starred in a different segment directed by Mira Nair.

49.

Natalie Portman next took on a role opposite Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal in the drama film Brothers, a remake of the 2004 Danish film of the same name.

50.

Natalie Portman's role was that of a war widow, for which she spoke with military wives to prepare.

51.

Natalie Portman was trained by the professional ballerina Mary Helen Bowers, and in preparation, she trained for five to eight hours daily for six months and lost 20 pounds.

52.

Aronofsky defended Natalie Portman by insisting that she had performed 80 percent of the on-screen dancing.

53.

Natalie Portman described the experience of making it as a "palate cleanser" from the intensity of Black Swan.

54.

Natalie Portman next agreed to the film Your Highness for the opportunity of playing an athletic and foul-mouthed character, which she believed was rare for actresses.

55.

Natalie Portman liked the idea of Kenneth Branagh directing a big-budget film that emphasized character; she signed on to it before receiving a script, and helped develop her part by reading the biography of scientists such as Rosalind Franklin.

56.

In 2012, Natalie Portman topped Forbes listing of the most bankable stars in Hollywood.

57.

In 2015, Natalie Portman appeared alongside an ensemble cast, including Christian Bale, in Terrence Malick's experimental drama film Knight of Cups, which marked her first project after giving birth.

58.

Natalie Portman shot for it within a week of returning to work and she did not receive a traditional script or dialogues, improvising most of her scenes with Bale.

59.

Natalie Portman said that shooting with Malick influenced her own directorial venture, A Tale of Love and Darkness which was released in the same year.

60.

Natalie Portman had wanted to adapt the book since she first read it a decade ago, but postponed it until she was old enough to play the leading role of a mother herself.

61.

Natalie Portman collaborated closely with Amos, showing him drafts of her script as she adapted the book.

62.

Natalie Portman next produced and starred in the western film Jane Got a Gun about a young mother seeking vengeance.

63.

Natalie Portman portrayed Jacqueline Kennedy in the Pablo Larrain-directed biopic Jackie, about Kennedy's life immediately after the 1963 assassination of her husband.

64.

Natalie Portman was initially intimidated to take on the part of a well-known public figure, and eventually researched Kennedy extensively by watching videos of her, reading books, and listening to audiotapes of her interviews.

65.

Natalie Portman worked with a dialect coach to adopt Kennedy's unique speaking style.

66.

Natalie Portman won the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

67.

Natalie Portman served as producer for the comedy horror film Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, directed by Burr Steers, and starred in Rebecca Zlotowski's French-Belgian drama Planetarium.

68.

In 2018, Natalie Portman starred in the science fiction film Annihilation, based on Jeff VanderMeer's novel.

69.

Natalie Portman played a biologist and former soldier who studies a mysterious quarantined zone of mutating organisms.

70.

Natalie Portman was pleased to headline a rare female-led science fiction film, and she moved her family near Pinewood Studios during filming.

71.

Natalie Portman then starred as a troubled pop singer in Vox Lux, sharing the part with Raffey Cassidy.

72.

Natalie Portman was drawn to the idea of showcasing the negative effects of fame, and in preparation, she watched documentaries on musicians and listened to the music of Sia, who wrote her songs in the film.

73.

Natalie Portman then portrayed a psychologically troubled astronaut in the drama Lucy in the Sky, directed by Noah Hawley.

74.

Natalie Portman replaced the film's producer Reese Witherspoon, who backed out due to a scheduling conflict.

75.

The film was poorly received, though Natalie Portman's performance was praised.

76.

In 2022, Natalie Portman reprised her role as Foster in the sequel Thor: Love and Thunder, in which her character becomes Mighty Thor.

77.

Natalie Portman agreed to return to the franchise after meeting with director Taika Waititi, who offered to portray her character in an "adventurous and fun and funny" way.

78.

Natalie Portman, who is an advocate for animal rights, became a vegetarian at age eight, a decision which came after she witnessed a demonstration of laser surgery on a chicken while attending a medical conference with her father.

79.

Natalie Portman became a vegan in 2009 after reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals and later produced a documentary on factory farming systems in the US by the same title.

80.

In 2007, Natalie Portman traveled to Rwanda with Jack Hanna, to film the documentary, Gorillas on the Brink.

81.

Natalie Portman has been an advocate of environmental causes since childhood, when she joined an environmental song and dance troupe known as World Patrol Kids.

82.

On This Week with George Stephanopoulos in April 2007, Natalie Portman discussed her work with FINCA and how it can benefit women and children in Third World countries.

83.

Natalie Portman is a supporter of the Democratic Party, and for the 2004 presidential election she campaigned for Senator John Kerry.

84.

In 2009, Natalie Portman signed a petition that defended Roman Polanski, who was charged with drugging and raping a thirteen-year-old girl in 1977, and has been a fugitive for decades.

85.

In January 2011, Natalie Portman was appointed an ambassador of WE Charity, an international charity and educational partner, spearheading their Power of a Girl campaign.

86.

Natalie Portman hosted a contest challenging girls in North America to fundraise for one of WE Charity's all-girl schools in Kenya.

87.

In 2006, Natalie Portman served as a guest lecturer at Columbia University for a course in terrorism and counterterrorism, where she spoke about her film V for Vendetta.

88.

In February 2015, Portman was among other alumni of Harvard University including Robert F Kennedy Jr.

89.

At Harvard, Natalie Portman wrote a letter to The Harvard Crimson in response to an essay critical of Israeli actions toward Palestinians.

90.

Natalie Portman has nevertheless criticized the Israeli government, specifically Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

91.

Natalie Portman was critical of Netanyahu's re-election in 2015, saying she was "disappointed" and often found his comments racist.

92.

In November 2017, Natalie Portman was announced as the Genesis Prize recipient for 2018, which includes $2,000,000 in prize money.

93.

Natalie Portman further clarified that she was not boycotting Israel, explaining that she did not want to "appear as endorsing" Netanyahu, who was to give a speech at the ceremony.

94.

Natalie Portman is a member of the One Voice movement.

95.

Natalie Portman took part in the 2018 Women's March in Los Angeles, where she spoke about the "sexual terrorism" she experienced at age thirteen after the release of her film Leon: The Professional.

96.

Later in 2020, Natalie Portman was announced as one of the co-founders and investors in an almost all-female group that was awarded a new franchise in the National Women's Soccer League, the top level of the women's sport in the US The new team, since unveiled as Angel City FC, began play in the 2022 NWSL season.

97.

Natalie Portman is married to French dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied, with whom she has two children.

98.

The family lived in Paris for a time after Millepied accepted the position of director of dance with the Paris Opera Ballet, and Natalie Portman has expressed a desire to become a French citizen.

99.

In 2010, Natalie Portman signed on with Dior and appeared in several of the company's advertising campaigns.

100.

In October 2012, Britain's Advertising Standards Authority banned a Dior advertisement that featured Natalie Portman wearing Dior mascara after a complaint from Dior's competitor, L'Oreal, saying that the advert "misleadingly exaggerated the likely effects of the product".

101.

Natalie Portman is the face of one of the company's fragrances, Miss Dior, inspired by Catherine Dior.

102.

Natalie Portman has starred in campaign videos for the fragrance, and promoted a new version of the fragrance, Rose N'Roses, in 2021.

103.

Natalie Portman was awarded the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Drama and the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Black Swan, and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for Closer.

104.

Natalie Portman has received two more Academy Award nominations: Best Supporting Actress for Closer and Best Actress for Jackie; and two more Golden Globe nominations: Best Supporting Actress for Anywhere but Here and Best Actress in a Drama for Jackie.