Natalie Portman's best friend in ninth grade is Rachael Neumann, who's "like, really, really, really smart."

But the 14-year-old, who loves biology and Bjork, has also spent the last year hanging out with Al Pacino, "who's really sweet," and Woody Allen, "who's really cool."

The only daughter of a New York doctor and his wife, Portman amazed critics with her performance two years ago as an assassin's protege in The Professional.

She plays Pacino's daughter in the current Heat, and she'll be in Allen's next movie.

And in Beautiful Girls, she steals the movie, critics say.

"I like how she's the smartest person in the movie," says Portman of her character.

And the cutest.

"Yeah," she giggles, people tell her that all the time.

The first time she heard it was in a pizza parlor. She was 10. A guy who said he was from Revlon urged her to model.

"I didn't want to model," she says. "I wanted to act."

She's always known it. As a little girl she would organize the neighborhood kids into mini-Broadway shows.

"Acting is fun. It's easy."

Easy?

"It's easier than doing surgery. I can tell you 50,000 jobs that are harder!"

Her parents are socking away all her acting money, she says. "They will never let me buy anything for myself. And if they say no to something, and I say I'll buy it with my own money, I get punished."

Punishment for Portman may mean not going out with her friends. Thursday night she was going to see Alanis Morissette with her father and Neumann. And this weekend? "I might go see a movie - but not Beautiful Girls. I've seen that, like, three times in the last two weeks."

An honors student, Portman intends to go to college. Anything else is "not an option" in her house. Besides, she says, "I don't know if I want to be an actress. I'm just going to do whatever I want to do."