Natalie Portman Profile
Name: Natalie Portman
Birth name: Natalie Hershlag
Birthdate: 9 June 1981
Birthplace: Jerusalem
Height: 5' 3
Profession: Actress

Natalie Portman Biography
Early life
Portman was born Natalie Hershlag (Hebrew: נטלי הרשלג‎) in Jerusalem, Israel. Her father, Avner Hershlag, is an Israeli doctor specializing in fertility and reproduction (reproductive endocrinology). Her mother, Shelley Stevens, is an American homemaker who now works as her agent. Portman's maternal ancestors were Jews from Austria and Russia and her paternal ancestors were Jews who immigrated to Israel from Poland and Romania. Her grandfather's parents died in Auschwitz and her Romanian-born great-grandmother was a spy for the British during World War II.

Portman's parents met at a Jewish student center at Ohio State University where her mother was selling tickets. Her father returned to Israel, but the two corresponded and were married when her mother visited Israel a few years later. In 1984, when Portman was three years old, the family moved from Israel to the United States, where her father pursued his medical training. The family first lived in Washington, D.C., where she attended Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, but relocated to Connecticut in 1988, and then settled permanently in Syosset, New York, in 1990. Portman has said that although she "really love[s] the States... my heart's in Jerusalem. That's where I feel at home." She is an only child and very close to her parents, who are often seen with her at her film premieres.

Education
Portman was a straight-A student. "I'd rather be smart than be a movie star," she told an interviewer. Although she says her family was not religious, she attended a Jewish elementary school, the Solomon Schechter Day School of Glen Cove, New York. She graduated from a public high school, Syosset High School. Portman reportedly skipped the premiere of Star Wars: Episode I so she could study for her high school final exams.

In June 2003, Portman graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in psychology, and pursued graduate studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the spring of 2004. At Harvard, Portman was Alan Dershowitz's research assistant (he thanks her in The Case for Israel). She was also a research assistant in a psychology lab, and in March 2006, appeared as a guest lecturer at a Columbia University course in terrorism and counterterrorism, where she spoke about her film V for Vendetta. In addition to being bilingual in Hebrew and English, Portman has studied French, Japanese, German and Arabic.

As a student, Portman co-authored two research papers which were published in professional scientific journals. Her 1998 high school paper on the "Enzymatic Production of Hydrogen" was entered in the Intel Science Talent Search. In 2002, she contributed to a study on memory called "Frontal Lobe Activation During Object Permanence" during her psychology studies at Harvard.

[Info from www.wikipedia.org]