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New York Post, 12/12/99
Source: New York Post Web Site
PHANTOM ID FOR NUBILE NATALIE
NATALIE Portman, like many of her classmates at Harvard, has already procured a fake ID so she can get into Boston bars.
But the 18-year-old freshman -- who was so exotically beautiful as Queen Amidala in "The Phantom Menace" -- should be a little more discreet wielding the counterfeit card.
The Boston Herald reports Portman threw a fit at the Roxy's "Anti-Millennium" party on Tuesday, when she turned up with 10 fellow students in tow demanding to get in.
"When a detail police officer checked her identification and told her he believed it was a fake, she told them she was friends with the deejay and caused a big commotion," Roxy rep Jen DeBarge told the paper.
The deejay that night was Moby, the bald-headed ambient musician. When he heard that Portman, whom he'd invited to the club, was stuck outside, he came to the door and threw a fit of his own.
"He said if she didn't get in, he wouldn't perform," DeBarge says.
Faced with the dilemma, the club let Portman in, but asked the cop to keep an eye on her and make sure she didn't get her hands on any booze.
"She stood in the back near the officer and didn't drink," DeBarge says. "She obviously pulled some rank. She has a lot of power for a young kid."
Under normal circumstances, Portman's fake ID would have been confiscated, and someone would have had a great collectible.
Meanwhile, reports a source at Harvard's recent black-tie Hasty Pudding Club dinner for new recruits, the newly-initiated Portman was complaining to friends that after "Anywhere But Here" flopped, her advisors were concerned that she's too flat-chested to play romantic leads.
"Her response was that she would never get breast implants because she's not even sure she's going to continue acting after her contract with ‘Star Wars' is up," says the source.
The talented co-ed was also heard to say that flat-chestedness has been blamed for Alicia Silverstone's less-than-stellar career. And as if torso concerns weren't enough, Portman said she'd also heard complaints that her face was becoming too angular as she loses her baby fat.
"She said she may end up suffering from Cute Kid Star Syndrome, and that her handlers compared her face to Tatum O'Neal's, with the inevitable view that she should get facial surgery on her chin and nose," reports our spy. "She said all of this has really soured her on Hollywood."
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Popcorn Interview with Roald Rynning
Source: Popcorn Website
Natalie Portman first rose to prominence as a precocious Lolita-type in Luc Besson's 'Leon', but it was as Queen Amidala in 'The Phantom Menace' that she found an international audience. The 18-year-old talks to ROALD RYNNING about her latest film, 'Anywhere But Here', why she won't do nude scenes and that little-known George Lucas franchise...
Q: In 'Anywhere But Here' you play a teenager trying to cope with an eccentric, over-protective mother. Did you identify with your character?
A: Yes. My parents are wonderful, but every adolescent goes through some version of what my character does in 'Anywhere But Here'. Like my character, I've definitely been embarrassed by my parents. My mother's voice tends to get a little loud and therefore she draws attention to us anywhere we go.
Q: In which ways are you and your character similar?
Q: Why did you first turn down the film?
Q: What are you studying?
Q: How do the other students treat you?
Q: Do you have a boyfriend?
Q: What kind of boys do you like?
Q: Has the success of 'The Phantom Menace' changed your life?
Q: What is the worst thing about fame?
Q: Did you like the film?
Q: Are you looking forward to the next 'Star Wars' film?
Q: What do you think about the 'Star Wars' fanatics?
Q: Finally, how would you describe yourself? |
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TV Guide, 10/20/99
Source: TV Guide Online
Natalie's Doggie Doings
Natalie Portman, who plays a teen about to leave home for college in the big-screen pic Anywhere But Here, is getting a real-life lesson in how hard it can be without mom around.
Portman, who's currently taking time off from her hot acting career (Star Wars: The Phantom Menace) to go to college, tells TV Guide Online that she recently became a wreck when she stepped in a big pile of dog poop on campus.
"It got all over my shoes and really freaked me out," she says. "So I got back to the dorm and just left my shoes on the front steps. I didn't care if they got stolen."
But the story doesn't end there: "I came back and my roommate had seen the shoes sitting there and put them in my room. I'm like, 'Oh no, what am I going to do?' So I called my mom. She said, 'If you've got dog poop on your shoes, just wipe it off.' I couldn't do it. So I went home for the weekend and took the shoes, still covered with dog poop wrapped in about twenty paper bags. I'm sure you can guess who cleaned off the dog poop."
Portman says her mom is a big help even when she's not there to help her famous daughter: "I definitely hear her telling me to stop procrastinating. And also just simple things, like when I do my laundry, I remember her saying, 'Put in a sheet of fabric softener into the dryer to keep my clothes soft.'" — Jeanne Wolf
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CNN, 11/10/99
Source: CNN Online
Natalie Portman hits the books
NEW YORK (AP) -- Natalie Portman is going to hate herself in the morning.
Hate herself because there are dirty jeans and unread books piling up in her dorm room. Hate herself because she is here, hundreds of miles away, curled up on a sofa answering questions.
"It's so overwhelming. I have to go home after this and just cry over how much work I have," says the 18-year-old college freshman, her eyes rolling heavenward.
"I'm having the most amazing, amazing, amazing time. But it's really hard: balancing everything, taking care of yourself, setting your own limits, scheduling for yourself," she says.
"And, on top of that, you have to balance doing, like, your housework, too -- which was never a part of the equation! All of a sudden, you have to do laundry and clean your sheets and vacuum and wash the toilets."
Trying to be true to herself
That's an image: Natalie Portman, the star of the summer's biggest smash hit and one of Hollywood's most sought-after young actresses, getting busy with a bathroom scrubber.
And why not? After all, that, too, is Portman, a teen-ager who rises to announce she needs "a potty break" or who preemptively apologizes for her "stinky feet" upon shedding her Guccis.
"I'm just trying to be true to who I am and not let anyone define me except for myself," she says. "I'm not trying to have a magazine call me the 'It Girl."'
Perhaps "Lit Girl" would be better. Portman may have ruled a planet in the "Star Wars" prequel, but now she just wants to be one more stressed-out frosh lugging books across the quad.
"I've been so lucky to have these opportunities, but we have a way of making movie stars not mortal. We have a way of making them images rather than people, and they're human beings," she says.
"They're extraordinary at what they do, but so is my father who is a doctor, and no one ever freaked out about meeting him. No one would ever shake shaking his hand, but people meet me and they'll shake and they'll cry and that's weird -- and that's wrong."
College pals not fazed by fame
Keeping Portman sane are her new college pals: the youngest speaker at the Million Man March; a cellist who has worked with Yo-Yo Ma; the poet-slash-artist down the hall; her roommate, a star tennis player.
"You should hear these kids!" she says. "I mean, these people are just all so fantastic in their own right that, you know, nothing I do is that impressive to them that they'd be overly interested in me."
Portman is as cagey as she is self-deprecating. She's an on-the-record vegetarian, a straight-A student, a teetotaler and an adamant nonsmoker. Drugs? Don't even think about it.
"I don't like it when people just assume they can smoke around me or do drugs around me," she says. "I think probably people view me as a goody-goody, which isn't necessarily true. I mean, I'm a human being. I'm not an angel."
There are areas, though, that Portman feels uncomfortable discussing. She shies away from referring to her hometown on New York's Long Island, and the gossipy details of her life at Harvard University aren't easily forthcoming. She's even registered under a different name at school.
"There's a great mystery to Natalie," says director Wayne Wang. "We're very close on one level, but also there's a great mystery about her. I think it's a certain kind of control that she has, a certain maturity."
Portman just laughs it off. The secrecy, she says, gives her insulation, while the pseudonym -- borrowed from her maternal grandmother -- offers a degree of anonymity when she's not acting.
"I'm not trying to hide," Portman insists. "I'm not trying to have a split life here. In no way am I trying to be two different people. I'm not Superman -- I'm the same person. I don't act differently when I'm in my different worlds."
Movie helped with college transition
Her worlds intertwined last year while making her new movie, "Anywhere But Here," in which Portman stars as a teen-ager mature beyond her years whose mother (Susan Sarandon) is flighty and needy.
Yearning for adulthood and freedom, Portman's character goes through a painful coming of age while also coming to terms with her mother and finally escaping -- to college.
In other words, life imitated art.
"It was interesting because it was like experiencing something exactly the same way that I knew I was going to experience a year later," she says. "Moving out is a big deal -- it's a huge change in your life -- so thinking about it a little earlier was helpful."
Portman is a delicate beauty with eyebrows that skate horizontally across her face and almond-shaped eyes that hint at her Israeli heritage. Two tiny moles stand sentry above either cheek.
Her striking looks led to her big break. Like an updated version of the Lana Turner-found-in-a-drugstore fable, Portman was discovered while munching pizza at a Long Island eatery.
"One day after dance class, I was in this pizza parlor and this guy just happened to be there because he lived in the neighborhood," she said. "He worked at Revlon, and he asked me if I was interested in modeling."
Nah. Natalie had other plans.
"I kept my cool," she recalls. "I told him that I wanted to act."
And so she did: After her debut in "The Professional," Portman got roles in "Heat," "Everyone Says I Love You," "Beautiful Girls" and "Mars Attacks!" She also starred on Broadway in "The Diary of Anne Frank."
Oh, and she never took an acting class.
"Sometimes when you kind of let things happen, it just works out," she says. "That's why it's kind of fascinating to me that I've succeeded. I think it's maybe why I've succeeded.
"Nobody likes someone who's pushy and whose world is going to be broken if they don't make it, you know? I think it's kind of comforting to people to see that I have a complete life outside of acting."
Then the undercover movie star leans in for a confession.
"I didn't have this undying need to be an actress. I didn't have that fire me ever -- at any point. And still, I don't think I have that within me," she says.
"I don't really know if acting would have ultimately become my passion as an adult, or if there's something else I would have found had I not been in the pizza shop. That's what college is helping me investigate."
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