From the “Star Wars” franchise to “Black Swan,” Natalie Portman is one of the most recognized and respected names in Hollywood. After all, the Oscar winner started acting at just 12 years old, and has been a force to be reckoned with ever since.
But, while fans of hers might have seen all her movies over the years, they might still be surprised to find out that Portman’s real name isn’t Portman, or Natalie for that matter. Before becoming the actress Natalie Portman, she was born Neta-Lee Hershlag.
Natalie Portman Changed Her Name Before Becoming an Actress
GettyBorn in Jerusalem, Israel, on June 9, 1981, Portman was given the name Neta-Lee Hershlag by her parents, Avner Hershlag and Shelley Stevens.
When she was just three years old, the family of three immigrated from Israel to the United States. Per Entertainment Weekly, that’s when she adopted the first name Natalie as an Americanized version of her first name.
Later on, when she got into acting as a child, she also adopted a different last name. Portman was her grandmother’s maiden name and felt like the right move “to protect her privacy,” the outlet reported.
Some of Portman’s first credits as a child star include “Léon: The Professional” in 1994, “Heat” in 1995, and “Beautiful Girls” in 1996.
Portman’s New Name Gave Her a New Level of Separation
GettyIn a 2024 interview with Vanity Fair, Portman explained that choosing a new name for herself as an actress gave her privacy and allowed her to be two people at once.
“I chose a different name when I started, which was kind of an interesting way that I separated identities,” she explained. “I would get upset if someone at school called me Natalie Portman. I was like, if you know me, you know me as Natalie Hershlag at school.”
“It was kind of an extreme bifurcation of identity that I’ve tried to integrate a little bit more as an adult,” she continued. “I felt like it was not accepting that both were part of me, that there wasn’t a ‘real’ me and a ‘pretend’ me, and that they didn’t necessarily have different names.”
“As I started having kids and a family, I started realizing that maybe it was not helpful to be like, there’s two of me,” she said. “I have many interactions during my day as a public person. To exclude that from my experience is not real.”
Portman is now a proud mom to son Aleph and daughter Amalia, with her ex-husband, Benjamin Millepied.
