Natalie Portman was
born Natalie Hershlag 9 June 1981. She is an
Israeli American actress. Her first role was as an orphan taken in by an
assassin in 1994 French action film Léon. During the 1990s, Portman had roles in
major films like Beautiful Girls, anywhere but here, before they vote for her role as
Padmé Amidala in the
Star Wars prequel trilogy.Portman parents met at a
Jewish student center at Ohio State University, where her mother
sold tickets. They corresponded after her
father returned to
Israel and was
married when her mother visited a
few years later. In 1984, when Portman was three years old, the family moved to the
U.S., where her father received his
medical education. The family first lived in Washington, DC, where
Portman attended Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, but moved to Connecticut in
1988 and
later settled in
Long Island, New York, 1990.
Portman took graduate courses at Hebrew University in Jerusalem in spring 2004. In March 2006 she appeared as a guest lecturer at a Columbia University course in terrorism and counter terrorism, where she talked about her film V for Vendetta.





