To mark Audrey Hepburn's seventieth birthday this past May, Ferragamo teamed up with the late star's eponymous charitable foundation to hold a black tie, star -encrusted fund raiser at the new Cipriani Palace on Wall Street. It was a scene straight out of "Wall Street": limousine log jams outside; famous faces, face lifts and Fendi bags inside. But in a flock of little black dresses--every woman in the house, from Gina Gershon to Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia's slinky cat -eyed date, was channelling Audrey--the Prada number on 17-year-old Natalie Portman just seemed littler and blacker than the rest. Or so thought the entire battery of paparazzi, who dogged the slip of a star from the moment of her arrival to her hasty retreat and seclusion (with handlers) in a service area in the back. "They're treating her just like royalty," whispered one social veteran in awe. As Natalie hovered by the door and images from "Roman Holiday" haunted the silver screens erected for the occasion, one couldn't help associating Por tman with the reluctant young princess who flees her monarchic obligations for a haircut, a scooter and Gregory Peck.

I'd met Natalie for brunch a few weeks earlier in the less starry environs of Jerry's, a reliable SoHo diner now somewhat past its Eighties zenith of fashionability. Pruning the menu of items containing hard cheeses (she is a rennet-avoiding vegetarian), she settles on fried eggs. "I'm weird," she explains, unconvincingly. In fact, she is a wonderfully normal teenager with all the expected quirks and convictions of her peers. A sartorially savvy high -school-aged confidante of mine recently confided the recipe for SoHo-worthy teenage attire: two parts sport, one part young designer, one part ethnic. And such is the look Natalie has cooked up for herself: a narrow khaki windcheater cut like a motocross jacket (picked up in Japan on a school trip with her Japanese class); Prada Sport criss-cross strap sandals (purchased the day before at the boutique); plaid, slim-cut trousers by Built By Wendy (purchased four years ago); and an Asian-print, patchwork tote from Product (a present from the folks). In the tote? A review workload for her biochemistry exam ("no calculators allowed!" reads the warning on page one). School outings, flaky food habits, calculator prohibitions, trousers that fitted when one was 13: Natalie seems like just another brainy kid with downbeat Nineties style. "When I'm out, I'm very rarely recognized," she says, happily.

However, with the release of the Star Wars prequel, The Phantom Menace, in which Portman plays Queen Amidala of the planet Naboo, her stardom will soon be inescapable. When we meet, neither of us has seen the closely guarded film, but that seems rather beside the point. Star Wars is not a movie, it's a commercial kingdom and Natalie's costumes--quasi-Elizabethan/Narnian affairs with headgear that makes Philip Treacy look like a beret-maker--have been scrutinized ad nauseum on the pages of fashion magazines. As Natalie tucks into her eggs, her publicist (a Hollywood princess' answer to a lady-in-waiting) stops by with hot -out-of-the-toy-factory action heroes, which look nothing like their very fine -boned and, yes, doll-like inspiration. Portman has provided the voice for these small bits of rubber and plastic that utter, when shaken or squeezed or otherwise manhandled, a few key bits of Naboo civic policy.

Portman's participation in the Star Wars saga--and The Phantom Menace is only the first of a trilogy to which she has committed--is her most boldly commercial career move to date. In fact, her professional life has been characterized by small, critical triumphs rather than crass capitulations to fame. A chance meeting with a Revlon scout in a Long Island pizzeria at the age of 11 led, in circuitous fashion, to a stunningly sophisticated screen debut in Luc Besson's Leon. As the pre-teen moll to Jean Reno's inarticulate hit man, Portman stole the film from Gary Oldman and the rest of the cast with a dead-on stare of explosively erotic possibilities. The fact of her extraordinary beauty was not lost on Besson, who framed her knowing little face with a sophisticated Louise Brooks bob and displayed her coltish legs in a skimpy pair of hot pants, even though Leon is not a film about sex (Portman's parents have held firm against her tackling explicit material as a minor). She was equally bewitching in Ted Demme's Beautiful Girls, in which the 13-year-old Natalie mesmerizes her neighbor (Timothy Hutton) with her emotional honesty and coy, tomboyish charms. There have been a few tiny screen gems--in Michael Mann's Heat and Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You--and a major theatrical coming-of-age when, at 16, she starred in The Diary of Anne Frank on Broadway. She has had no formal training as an actress and takes a very practical line when discussing the evolution of her craft. "I learnt so much from doing Anne Frank," she says. "You have to work so hard when you do theater because after 250 times you just can't feel it any more. It's probably more important to get training for the stage, because there are movements that don't come naturally." Her reign as Queen Amidala, the mother of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, is one in which she takes only a measured amount of pride. "Star Wars is all about the production artists that worked on it," she says. "It's going to be so beautiful, but I feel as though I can't tak e any credit for it."

A film that she will take credit for is Wayne Wang's Anywhere But Here, due out in November. Adapted from Mona Simpson's fictional exploration of the claustrophobic, dysfunctional relationship between a world-class dreamer/fantasist of a mother (Susan Sarandon) and her skeptical teenage daughter, the film marks Portman's transition from child to adult star and may prove to be the critical watershed of her young professional life. All signs are good. Simpson is pleased with Portman's interpretation of her fictional character: "Natalie's Ann August is subtle, pressing and yet somehow stately. She may be less wild, less rough than the Ann of my novel, but she is no less loveable."

"Our experience was always one of equals," says Sarandon. "Natalie is someone who is so professional and prepared that there's not a lot of coaxing that needs to go on. She has amazing access to springs of emotion. I'd work with her again in a flash."

But Sarandon may have to wait. Next autumn, Natalie will attend Harvard and has decided not to take any roles that would interfere with her studies. In the summers there will be film sets; the other nine months, the library. It might seem an odd sequel to The Prequel, this decision to disappear from Hollywood on the tide of her big break, but it makes perfect sense in the context of Portman's upbringing. She is the Israeli-born daughter of a doctor, and spent her early years in Israel, Maryland and Connecticut while her father received advanced training. When she was nine, the family settled in Long Island where she has lived as a suburban kid ever since, attending the local high school (even during her run as Anne Frank) and escaping to the city on weekends ("where I live is a classic suburb--a nice place to grow up but there's nothing to do, which causes a huge problem for young people"). School and family have always come first, and she speaks with greater enthusiasm about the class trip to Japan than she does about working with the likes of Ewan McGregor and Liam Neeson (both of whom she's extremely fond of: Ewan for his sense of humor, Liam for his external grandeur and internal mushiness). The US premiere for Star Wars falls, inconveniently, smack in the middle of her Advanced Placement exams (think: A -levels) and she seems more distracted by the prospect of so-so marks than by the looming fashion dilemma of what to wear when the whole world will be watching.

That said, Ms. Portman wants to set one thing straight during our meeting: Queen Amidala is not a nerd in ceremonial dress. "I'm no Sandra Dee," she giggles, referring to a recent profile which portrayed her as the squeakiest waif ever to wear a pair of trainers. She loves to dance, particularly at giddy, velvet-rope nightspots such as Life. And she has had boyfriends, but their identities are a matter for her. "You just don't talk about boyfriends in magazines; you go out to restaurants but not to movie premieres."

But this is not the half of it. Natalie's true surname is a mystery and where she lives in Long Island has never been divulged. Somewhere in a leafy neighborhood, a little girl has grown up surrounded and protected by watchful, unflashy parents and friends who couldn't care less about her starry other life. "I don't draw attention to myself," she says, spearing a home fry. "When I go to school I'm not 'Natalie Portman--movie star'. Anyway, at school people are stars in so many areas--soccer or art or whatever--and being the girl from Star Wars is just one of the many ways to stand out."

The filming of the George Lucas epic removed Natalie and her mother from the orbit of suburban New York for three months. Shot over her summer holiday in 1997 in England, Italy and Tunisia, the shoot provided a lesson in the strange discomforts of living abroad. London took some getting used to: "It rained for the first two weeks, and I had no one other than my mom as I wasn't really friendly with people in the cast--I mean, not on a going-out level." Once it stopped raining, she and her mother ventured out to museums and theaters and other edifying activities. Her shopping was unpretentious and generationally correct: she fell in love with a since-misplaced Doctor Seuss backpack (bearing the slogan--what else?--"I love to read") picked up for a snip at Camden Market, and sniffed around Covent Garden for environmentally friendly lotions and potions. (Natalie may not be Sandra Dee, but she is a dream child.) Food provided a thornier matter. "I had a big problem at first finding things to eat. I mean, you grow up eating certain things and when you're away for a while you get homesick for the flavors you're used to."

In Natalie's case, make that edamame and toasted sesame dressing. I once spotted her eating salty soy beans, dumplings and salad at Wagamama in the company of two visiting American friends. It was a true-to-life, oddball high-school trio: beautiful girl, chubby girl and safely effeminate boy, all innocently drinking fizzy water and happy to be on the town. ("I love Wagamama," says Natalie, when I tell her of the sighting).

The scene was far removed from Hollywood's rigidly Darwinian vision of American high-school life, which always involves a wholesale endorsement of the external signifiers of popularity (looks, money, fame)--consider, for example, such recents hits as She's All That, Never Been Kissed and Ten Things I Hate About You... Natalie, it must be noted, has steered clear of the recent cinematic craze for all things high school, and her generation of actresses can be divided into those who want you to know what they did last summer (Jennifer Love Hewitt, Katie Holmes, Neve Campbell) and those who don't (Portman, Gaby Hoffman, Claire Danes). Those who attend school on film have cashed in on their youthful beauty and are now reaping the big rewards of American fame; those who eschew the genre are banking on lasting artistic credibility. The latter group tends towards privacy and university. When Natalie attends Harvard next year, she will learn languages and steer clear of drama. Bard College-bound Gaby Hoffman (who sha red the scene with Natalie in Everyone Says I Love You), says, "Maybe I'll never act again, but I've had a career that I'm proud of and I want to be a literature major." Of course, nothing impresses Hollywood more than an Ivy League degree: see the trail blazed by Jodie Foster (Yale) and Mira Sorvino (Harvard).

But like another Ivy-Leaguer, Brooke Shields (Princeton), Natalie may find it difficult to retreat studiously into the obscurity of student life. She is simply too beautiful. "Natalie possesses an amazing sense of grace in everything she does," says Sarandon. It was no doubt for this reason that Isaac Mizrahi selected her to be the face of his Isaac campaign, and designers now throw dresses at her before every public appearance. "There are not enough superlatives for this girl," says Mizrahi. "She is such a gifted actress and then, to top it off, what she looks like! I have this strong feeling that she is going to be a legend."

Which brings us back to Audrey Hepburn. At the Ferragamo gala, the montage of clips from Hepburn's movies was followed by a montage of moments from her life as a charity worker in Africa. For all of Hepburn's limitless screen charm, it was the images of her as a real person in real clothes that moved the audience to tears. As Natalie Portman packs up for Cambridge, Massachusetts, she may have been reassured to see that there's more to life than acting. It would be nice to imagine that Natalie could go off to college a star and graduate as an ordinarily useful member of society--and be just as valued. But, as she says wryly, "I can totally imagine myself not being an actress, but it's a little stranger now that I've started to get more recognition. If I want to be a doctor, it will be weird for my patients to think, 'Oh, my doctor's the mother of Princess Leia.'"