100% Natalie Portman

On June 9, 1981, Natalie was born Natalie Hershlag (Hebrew: נטלי הרשלג‎) in Jerusalem, Israel from an Israeli doctor Avner Hershlag and mother Shelley Stevens who currently is working as her agent. Natlalie's maternal ancestors were from Russia & Austria of Jewish decent and her paternal ancestors were from Poland and Romania also of Jewish decent who immigrated to Israel. It is said that her Romanian-born great-grandmother was a spy in World War II working with the British.

When Natalie was only three years old, the family moved from Israel to the United States. While her father pursued his medical training in Washington DC, Natalie attended Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School. In 1988, the family relocated to Connecticut then settled in Long Island, New York in 1990.

Portman was a straight-A student. "I'd rather be smart than be a movie star," she told an interviewer.  Natalie attended a Jewish elementary school, the Solomon Schechter Day School of Glen Cove in New York even though she spoke of her parents not being religious.  Natalie reportedly chose not to attend the opening premiere of Star Wars: Episode I so she could study for her final exams in high school.  Portman graduated from the Syosset High School. 

Portman has been a vegetarian since childhood and is an advocate for animal rights. She does not eat animal products or wear fur, feathers or leather. "All of my shoes are from Target and Stella McCartney", she says. In 2007, Natalie Portman traveled to Rwanda with Jack Hanna, to film a documentary titled Gorillas on the Brink. Later at a naming ceremony, Portman named a baby gorilla Gukina, which means 'to play'. In 2007, she launched her own brand of vegan footwear. Portman has been an advocate of environmental causes since childhood, when she joined an environmental song and dance troupe known as World Patrol Kids.

Early career

Portman started dancing lessons at the age of four and she performed in local troupes. At the age of ten, a Revlon agent asked her to become a child model, 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." Portman spent her school holidays attending theater camps. When she was ten, she auditioned for Ruthless!, a play about a girl who is prepared to commit murder to get the lead in a school play, and she was chosen as the understudy for Laura Bell Bundy. In 1994, she auditioned for the role of a child who befriends a middle-aged hitman in Luc Besson's film Léon (aka The Professional). Soon after getting the part, she took her grandmother's maiden name "Portman" as her stage name, in the interest of privacy; in the Director's Cut of the film on DVD she is credited as Natalie Hershlag. Léon opened on November 18, 1994, and marked her feature film debut at age 13. That same year she appeared in the short film Developing, which aired on television.