Shooting Star
Star, April 1997
By John Burfitt

Fifteen-year-old Natalie Portman's face has been likened to a "young-Julia Roberts-meets-Cindy Crawford." Well, that may be the case, but she'll be outshining Julia in the upcoming movie they're both starring in, and despite being approached by Cindy C's cosmetics company, Revlon, Natalie turned down their offer to model, in favor of acting. And act she has, having already shared the screen with Uma Thurman and Al Pacino.

Natalie's first movie was 1994's The Professional, when she was 11. She then went on to play Al Pacino's step-daughter in Heat, and you may have caught Natalie in last year's Beautiful Girls, where she did a very good job of taking the spotlight away from Uma Thurman. So what's this about Natalie sharing the screen with Julia Roberts? It's all happening in Woody Allen's new movie Everyone Says I Love You.

"It's great," says Nat, "It's an old fashioned musical where people burst into song as they walk down the street. I had a good time. It was my first time working with other kids like Lukas Haas and Drew Barrymore. Julia Roberts, Alan Alda and Goldie Hawn are in it too."

Israel-born Natalie moved to America with her American mum and Israeli dad when she was three. She and her parents now live in New York, and she has travelled to Japan and Australia. When she's not travelling, acting and schooling, Natalie likes listening to singers like Björk and PJ Harvey, watching Ellen and Friends, ice-skating (which she learnt on the set of Beautiful Girls), ballet, tap and jazz dancing.

Natalie is still keen to do well at school, despite her blossoming career; does it ever get to be a handful? "Occasionally, it does. I can remember a couple of nights without sleeping because I had to do my homework and also to attend the premiere of a movie." (A few of which she's been spotted at with Jonathan Taylor Thomas).

Well, Natalie may love school, but she's actually a bit of a space-cadet: "I like acting for now. But after seeing Apollo 13, what I really want to do be is an astronaut. I'm dying to go to a space camp next summer!

"There's so much else to do in the world. To just be interested in doing films would limit my life."