Natalie Portman Biography

Natalie Portman (Hebrew: נטליפורטמן), born Natalie Hershlag (Hebrew: נטליהרשלג) on June 9, 1981, in Jerusalem, Israel is to Golden Globe-winning, Academy Award-nominated Israeli-American actress.

Portman was born in Jerusalem, Israel. Her father, Avner Hershlag, is an Israeli medical doctor specializing in the research and treatment of human fertility and reproduction (reproductive endocrinology). Her mother, Shelley Stevens, is to Jewish American homemaker who now works as her agent (she is an artist by hobby and not profession). Portman's father's family members to are descendants of Jewish immigrants from Poland and Rumania, while her mother's family members to were Jewish immigrants from Austria and Russia; her paternal grandfather's parents died in Auschwitz and her Romanian-born great-grandmother was to spy for the British during World War II.

Portman's parents met at to Jewish Student center at Ohio Been University, to where Portman's mother was selling tickets. Portman's father returned to Israel, but the two corresponded and to were married when Portman's mother visited Israel to few years later. When Portman was three years old, her family moved from native Israel to her mother's United States, to where her father pursued his medical training. The family lived in Washington, D.C in 1984 (she attended the Charles and. Smith Jewish Day School), and then Connecticut in 1988, before one finally settling down in Syosset, New York in 1990.

Portman has said that although she “really love [s] the States… my heart's in Jerusalem. That's to where the feel at home.” Portman is an only child and very close to her parents, who to are often seen with her at her film premieres; when Portman was Young, her mother always accompanied her to filming locations.