NEW YORK--With her lush brown locks shampoo-commercial perfect and sedate pants outfit, Natalie Portman couldn't look more composed if she were a score written by Star Wars' own John Williams. One wouldn't think the Long Island high-school senior has an Advance Placement final the next day. Let alone have the pressure of being the female lead in the mega-huge The Phantom Menace weighing on her model-slim shoulders.

But after playing Menace's Queen Amidala, who fights to save her planet Naboo while bearing the brunt of filmmaker George Lucas' fetish for weird female hair (one 'do that looks like water buffalo horns rivals Princess Leia's cinnamon-bun swirls), such real-life issues are a relative snap.

"There's a big uproar over this movie and, while it's in theaters, it'll be hectic," says Portman, 17, who was discovered in a latter-day version of Schwab's drugstore--a pizza parlor. "But I have my family and friends. They keep my life OK. I can go wherever I want. I have a feeling my life won't change drastically after the movie is out."

That remains to be seen. Yet Portman, who made her film debut at age 11 as a hit man's apprentice in The Professional, does seem to be a breed apart from the teen clique dominating theater screens now.

She tends to work with established, older actors such as Al Pacino in Heat, Jack Nicholson and Glenn Close in Mars Attacks! and Susan Sarandon in the upcoming Anywhere But Here. She dazzled critics in The Diary of Anne Frank on Broadway. And she already has picked a college to attend next year. Her choice is a secret, but it's likely Ivy League: She was accepted at Harvard and Yale.

"I think it would be really stupid to limit myself and say this is what I'm going to be doing the rest of my life," says Portman, who sounds as sensible as her onscreen ruler. Although anyone who is familiar with the Star Wars saga knows what Amidala is doing the rest of her life: Marrying Anakin Skywalker (a Jedi knight and future bad guy Darth Vader) and giving birth to twins Luke and Leia.

Portman herself had to play catch-up with the facts of the hugely popular space opera. The only child of a fertility specialist father and a stay-at-home mother, she spent the first three years of her life in Israel. She never saw the three earlier Star Wars films until she was signed for the prequel. "Most people are appalled by that. But it's not the type of movie I would normally go to see. And they came out when I was really young." A movie that is her type? Dirty Dancing. She admits to seeing it "a hundred times."

It doesn't bother her that Menace is mainly a boy's fantasy. "I think it's really exciting to be the only girl. She's a good role model because she's smart, strong and powerful."

Royalty has its rewards, and Portman was given a complete collection of Amidala action figures and fashion dolls, which she promises to cherish. Unlike her childhood Barbies. "I used to butcher my Barbies. I would draw hearts on their cheeks. I would give them haircuts and I would keep going because it would be uneven and they would be left bald."

No time to mutilate toys these days. The next two Star Wars prequels loom in 2002 and 2005. "Amidala is going to fall in love," although not with Jake Lloyd, the current Anakin. "She's so stony and severe in the first film. It's going to be interesting to see how she changes."

And Portman, who at 14 turned down the title role in Lolita for being too sexually explicit, is ready to make the leap into more adult fare. She next shoots Where the Heart Is, "a tiny independent kind of film" about a Southern trailer-park girl who gets pregnant and is abandoned by her boyfriend at a Wal -Mart.

As exciting as all the Star Wars hoopla has been, it doesn't beat having the ultimate bonding experience with Sarandon, her wayward mom in Anywhere But Here. While making the movie in Los Angeles, they went together to see the 1975 cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show. With Sarandon's children in tow, no less, who hadn't yet seen Mom prance in her underwear with an alien transvestite. "I'm so impressed she brought her kids to it. She's very liberal like that."

And there is the prom. Contrary to a recent Vanity Fair article, a friend from another school did summon the nerve to ask Portman. And no, the stylish young actress, whose savvy fashion sense is often compared with Audrey Hepburn's, isn't going to borrow one of Amidala's elaborate geisha get-ups for the event.

"A designer is going to give me something to wear. It's the most amazing perk I have."