Within the bundle of energy called Natalie Portman there seem to be two actresses vying for screen time. One is a child possessed of full-grown wisdom: "I'd do a kids' movie if it was realistic, but those hunky-dory tales are stupid sometimes. They make kids with real lives feel they are not as happy." The other is a budding adult with enough allure to suggest a PG Lolita. Now 15, Portman drew statutory stares from Jean Reno in her debut as a gun moll in 1994's The Professional and plays a disarmingly frank teen in Beautiful Girls.

"I am more a teenager than anyone else I know," is how Portman explains her cusp -riding persona. "One minute I feel really adult and the next minute I say, 'Let's play hide-and-seek'."

Portman is easy to find. Spotted at age 11 in a New York pizza parlor by a modelling agent, the Israeli-born, New York-residing daughter of a doctor father and artist mother opted for acting instead. Lately, she's been racking up roles for A-List directors. She was Al Pacino's suicidal step-daughter in Michael Mann's Heat and will be seen, along with Liv Tyler, in Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You and in Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! "I play the president's daughter. She becomes dark and rebellious. I don't think this girl's like Chelsea," says Portman. After that comes Robert Redford's adaptation of The Horse Whisperer.

Will Portman coalesce into a grown-up actress? Beautiful Girls director Ted Demme doesn't doubt it. "She'll go to college and then come back into the industry and take it over."