Historical/Famous Person Research
Paper Criteria
Thoroughly describes life, background, schooling and family situation. Identifies person’s successes and failures that may contribute to person’s success.
All gifted characteristics demonstrated by the individual are recognized and explained. Placement in the gifted program is determined to current criteria for placement.
Natalie Portman
Natalie Portman
Website information
Natalie Portman is the first person born in the 1980s to have won the Academy Award for Best Actress (for Black Swan (2010)).
Natalie was born Natalie Hershlag on June 9, 1981, in Jerusalem, Israel. She is the only child of Avner Hershlag, a Israeli-born doctor, and Shelley Stevens, an American-born artist (from Cincinnati, Ohio), who also acts as Natalie’s agent. Her parents are both of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. Natalie’s family left Israel for Washington, D.C., when she was still very young. After a few more moves, her family finally settled in New York, where she still lives to this day. She graduated with honors, and her academic achievements allowed her to attend Harvard University. She was discovered by an agent in a pizza parlor at the age of 11. She was pushed towards a career in modeling but she decided that she would rather pursue a career in acting. She was featured in many live performances, but she made her powerful film debut in the movie Léon: The Professional (1994) (aka “Léon”). Following this role Natalie won roles in such films as Heat (1995), Beautiful Girls (1996), and Mars Attacks! (1996).
It was not until 1999 that Natalie received worldwide fame as Queen Amidala in the highly anticipated US$431 million-grossing prequel Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace(1999). She then she starred in two critically acclaimed comedy dramas, Anywhere But Here (1999) and Where the Heart Is (2000), followed by Closer (2004), for which she received an Oscar nomination. She reprised her role as Padme Amidala in the last two episodes of the Star Wars prequel trilogy: Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones(2002) and Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005). She received an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Black Swan (2010).
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000204/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
Natalie Portman
Portman at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival
Born Neta-Lee Hershlag
June 9, 1981 (age 37)[1]
Jerusalem
Residence Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Citizenship • Israel
• United States
Alma mater Harvard University
Occupation • Actress
• film producer
• director
Years active 1994–present
Works Full list
Spouse(s) Benjamin Millepied (m. 2012)
Children 2
Awards Full list
Natalie Portman (born Neta-Lee Hershlag;[a] June 9, 1981) is an film actress, producer, and director with dual Israeli and American citizenship. She is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award and two Golden Globe Awards.
Portman made her feature film debut as the young protégée of a hitman in Léon: The Professional (1994). While still in high school, she gained international recognition for starring as Padmé Amidala in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menaceand received critical acclaim for playing a precocious teenager in the drama Anywhere but Here (both 1999). From 1999 to 2003, Portman attended Harvard University for a bachelor’s degree in psychology. She continued acting while at university, starring in The Public Theater’s 2001 revival of Anton Chekhov’s play The Seagull and the sequel Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002). In 2004, Portman was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and won a Golden Globe Award for playing a mysterious stripper in Closer.
The Star Wars prequel trilogy concluded with Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005), following which Portman portrayed a wide variety of roles. She played Evey Hammond in V for Vendetta (2006), Anne Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl(2008), and a troubled ballerina in the psychological horror film Black Swan (2010), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Portman went on to star in the romantic comedy No Strings Attached (2011) and featured as Jane Foster in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films Thor (2011) and Thor: The Dark World (2013). For portraying Jacqueline Kennedy in the biopic Jackie (2016), Portman received her third Oscar nomination.
Portman’s directorial ventures include the short film Eve (2008) and the biographical drama A Tale of Love and Darkness(2015). In 2008, she served as the youngest jury member of the Cannes Film Festival. Portman is vocal about the politics of America and Israel, and is an advocate for animal rights and environmental causes. She is married to the dancer Benjamin Millepied, with whom she has two children.
Family background and education
Portman was born on June 9, 1981, in Jerusalem.[1] Her parents are both Jewish.[4][5][6] Her parents gave her the traditional Hebrew name of “Neta-Lee Hershlag” at birth.[2] She is the only child of Shelley (née Stevens),[7] an American homemaker who works as Portman’s agent, and Avner Hershlag, an Israeli fertility specialist and gynecologist.[8] Her maternal grandparents, Bernice (née Hurwitz) and Arthur Stevens[7] (whose family surname was originally Edelstein),[9] were from Jewish families who moved to the United States from Austria and Russia.[10] Natalie’s paternal grandparents, Mania (née Portman) and Zvi Yehuda Hershlag, were Jewish immigrants to Israel.[11][12] Zvi, born in Poland, moved to what was then Mandatory Palestine in 1938 and eventually became an economics professor. His parents died at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.[12] One of Natalie’s paternal great-grandmothers was born in Romania and was a spy for British Intelligence during World War II.[13][14]
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. In 1984, when Portman was three years old, the family moved to the United States, where her father received his medical training.[10] Portman, a dual citizen of the United States and Israel,[15] has said that although she “really love[s] the States… my heart’s in Jerusalem. That’s where I feel at home.”[13] 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,[16] in 1990.[17][18] While living in the Washington, D.C. area, Portman attended Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Maryland.[11]Portman learned to speak Hebrew[19] while living on Long Island and attended a Jewish elementary school, the Solomon Schechter Day School of Nassau County in Jericho, New York.[16][20] She graduated from Syosset High School in Syosset, Long Island in 1999.[21][22] 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.[16]Portman skipped the premiere of her film Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, so she could study for her high school final exams.[23]
After graduating from Harvard University in 2003, she was commencement speaker in 2015.
As a student, Portman co-authored two research papers that were published in scientific journals. 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.[25][26]
In 2003, Portman graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in psychology.[27][28] “I don’t care if [college] ruins my career,” she said in 2002. “I’d rather be smart than a movie star.”[29][30] At Harvard, Portman was Alan Dershowitz’s research assistant.[31][32] While attending Harvard, she was a resident of Lowell House[33] and wrote a letter to the Harvard Crimson in response to an essay critical of Israeli actions toward Palestinians.[34]
Portman returned to Israel and took graduate courses at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the spring of 2004.[35] In March 2006, she was a guest lecturer at a Columbia University course in terrorism and counterterrorism, where she spoke about her 2006 film, V for Vendetta.[36] Portman has professed an interest in foreign languages since childhood and has studied French,[37] Japanese,[37] German,[38] and Arabic.[39]
Career
Early work: 1992–2003
Portman started dancing lessons at age four and performed in local troupes. At the age of 10, a Revlon agent asked her to become a child model,[17][40] but she turned down the offer to focus on acting. In a magazine interview, Portman said that she was “different from the other kids. I was more ambitious. I knew what I liked and what I wanted, and I worked very hard. I was a very serious kid.”[41] 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.[35]
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.[42][43] Léon: The Professional opened in 1994,[44] marking her feature film debut.[45]
“ And there’s a surprising preponderance of that kind of role for young girls. Sort of being fantasy objects for men, and especially this idealised purity combined with the fertility of youth, and all this in one…so I definitely shied away from it. ”
— Natalie Portman in a 2007 interview with The Guardian[46]
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.[47] She was the first choice to play Juliet in William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, but producers felt her age wasn’t suitable.[40] In 1997, Portman played the role of Anne Frank in a Broadway adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank.[48] It was after 1996’s Beautiful Girls that Portman grew reluctant to accept roles where her character was a sexualized youngster. In an interview with Guardian feature writer Simon Hattenstone asked if Portman was aware that because of them she was a “paedophile’s dream”? Portman nodded a bit uncomfortably, stating that it “dictated a lot of my choices afterwards ‘cos it scared me…it made me reluctant to do sexy stuff, especially when I was young”.[46]
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.[17][49] Following production on The Phantom Menace, she initially turned down a lead role in the film Anywhere but Here after learning it would involve a sex scene, but director Wayne Wang and actress Susan Sarandon (who played Portman’s mother in the film) demanded a rewrite of the script. Portman was shown a new draft, and she decided to accept the role.[17] The film opened in late 1999, and she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Ann August.[50] Critic Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon called Portman “astonishing” and said that “[u]nlike any number of actresses her age, she’s neither too maudlin nor too plucky.”[51] She then signed on to play the lead role of a teenage mother in Where the Heart Is, which opened in April 2000.[52]
On the set of Free Zone, 2005
After filming Where the Heart Is, Portman moved into the dorms of Harvard University to pursue her bachelor’s degree in psychology.[17] She said in a 1999 interview that, with the exception of the Star Wars prequels, she would not act for the next four years in order to concentrate on studying.[53] 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.[54] 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.[17] The play opened at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.[55] That same year, she was one of many celebrities who made cameo appearances in the 2001 comedy Zoolander.[56] Portman was cast in a small role in the 2003 drama film Cold Mountain.[17]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalie_Portman
awards and accomplishments
https://www.thisisinsider.com/natalie-portman-biography-life-family-college-career-2018-6
Concerns)” and “Why Not Me?”
Natalie Portman has been published twice in scientific journals.
Getty Images
The “Black Swan” lead has a bachelor’s degree from Harvard — making her the first alum to win an Academy Award — and took graduate courses at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She enrolled at Harvard as Natalie Herschlag, her birth name, for the anonymity, but her professors noted that she was an exceptional student.
Portman speaks six languages and has twice been published in scientific journals. As she once told the New York Post, “I’d rather be smart than a movie star.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-smartest-celebrities-in-hollywood-2014-11#kevin-spacey-is-a-julliard-trained-actor-19
So did you thought that Natalie Portman was just another Hollywood actress who won an academy award for the movie “Blackswan”? NO!
The 34-year-old actress is a genius from mind and an incredible human being, Here’s a look at some amazing facts about Natalie Portman
• Natalie Portman was born as Neta-lee Hershlag in Jerusalem, Israel.
• Natalie is an absolute genius with an IQ of 140.
• She co-authored 2 research papers that were published in scientific journals.
• She graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. in Psychology in 2003.
• She holds dual citizenship of Israel & United States of America. She lives in Paris.
• She can speak English, Hebrew, Spanish, French, German and Japanese fluently.
• She doesn’t own a TV however, she watches shows like “Transparent” and “Broad City” on the computer.
• Natalie Portman shaved her hair for the role in “V for Vendetta” and worked with a voice coach for English accent showing that she will do anything for her passion
• Natalie missed the premiere of her movie “Star Wars: Episode 1 — The Phantom Menace”, so she could study for her high school final exam
• Natalie has been taking ballet classes since the age of 4, which helped her prepare for her role in “Blackswan”
• Natalie is a vegetarian since the age of 8. She read the book called “Eating Animals” in 2009 to become a committed vegan. She came back to vegetarianism after discovering her
• pregnancy followed by coming a vegan again after Aleph’s birth to revert back to vegetarianism again.
• Dancing and diving are her favorite hobbies.
• She was discovered at the age of 10 at a pizza parlor.
• She made her debut at the age of 13 in the film “Léon: The Professional”.
https://rajankur.com/20-interesting-facts-about-the-genius-natalie-portman-8f8c34402ee7
Natalie Portman – Genius or Diva?
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• Preetam KaushikJournalist
Natalie Portman plays Alice Ayers, in the film Closer. When she isn’t portraying the pathos of an abandoned, broken-hearted woman, who deals with pain by running away from it, she’s an irresistible stripper in the movie.
Her cold and detached, yet undeniably sexy, stripper routine in the film transformed the perception of Natalie Portman from the thinking man’s sex symbol to an absolute sex symbol. While her repertoire of films bring out the different sides of the multifaceted actor, whether it’s a steely determination in V for Vendetta or a sense of haunting vulnerability in Wong Kar Wai’s My Blueberry Nights, Closer clearly highlights the two major aspects of this Oscar-winning superstar – Acting genius. Check. Sexy Diva. Check.
Natalie Portman is another kind of genius too. The ‘real’ kind. The young actress took time off from acting to get a Bachelors degree in Psychology from Harvard. As a student, she co-authored papers that were published in scientific journals. She even went on to be a semifinalist at the Intel Science Talent Search, a prestigious competition that has been described as the ‘Super Bowl of Science’. Because of her academic accomplishments, Natalie is one of the very (very, very!) few professional actors who have a finite Erdos-Bacon number, a really cool small world phenomenon measuring an individual’s degrees of separation from both mathematician Paul Erdős and Kevin Bacon.
If there was a perfect combination of oompish diva and brainy genius, Natalie Portman is it! What can we say, some women are just perfect like that.
Outside the hallowed Harvard campus, of course, Natalie’s sparkling genius for acting shines through in her films, like in Black Swan. She’s a blazing explosion of acting talent, performing both with her heart and her head. Not to forget, the body. She’s said to have practiced 8 hours a day to get the ballet dance moves right. With none other than Director Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler) to inspire her, Natalie unleashed her talent. While most thought she was a frontrunner for the academy award for her role in Black Swan in 2011, some people said she would lose out to her older colleagues. They were proved wrong, of course, and she swept that evening away, and made an acceptance speech thanking a whole bunch of people, including fiancé (now husband), ballet star Benjamin Millepied, whom she calls ‘my love.’
When Natalie started dating Benjamin, sometime in late 2009, he was living-in with his longtime girlfriend, Isabella Boylston, who is also a ballet dancer. Gossip mills were rife with rumors about how Portman stole Benjamin from Isabella. ‘Spoilt diva who wants it all!’ did we hear you say? Well, what can the girl do, Millepied is a real looker, a ballet dancer since the age of three, he’s got a chiseled body and a French accent to boot!
Natalie is more than just a sex symbol, she’s also an icon to many young women out there. However, over the last few years, Natalie has been more than a stellar icon, supporting many causes, including micro-finance for developing countries. Portman has traveled across Africa and other parts of the world spreading awareness about the advantages of micro-finance lending. The actress says she was first attracted to it because of her Israeli roots, as she was curious to know about its impact in Central Asia. Natalie is part of the ever-swelling numbers of beautiful Jewish women in Hollywood, including, her co-star in Black Swan, Mila Kunis, and Portman’s co-star in The Other Boleyn Girl, Scarlett Johansson. The only Jewish role, Natalie has portrayed so far is on Broadway, as a child actor, she played Anne Frank. She had said at one point, “I get like 400 Holocaust scripts. That’s what you get for being the openly Jewish actress!”
AT 29, Natalie Portman was a woman every man would have loved to have and then Benjamin swept her off her feet. Now at 32, she remains, of course, as desirable as ever!
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/preetam-kaushik/natalie-portman-genius-or-diva_b_3605405.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer_us=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc2VhcmNoZW5jcnlwdC5jb20v&guce_referrer_cs=_OGR11ZMW3AoqGKhq01HpA
