Natalie Portman | My Camden

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Natalie Portman

Profession: Actress
Place/Date of Birth: Jerusalem, Israel, 09 June 2020

Natalie praises ’creative’ Dustin - Dec 13 2007
The praise just keeps on coming for Dustin Hoffman.

His leading lady in Mr Magorium’s Wonder Emporium - Natalie Portman - has revealed what Dustin was like to work with.

"He’s just so creative. He’s very much like his character in that way, and I feel that every second he is using the utmost of his creative powers," she says.

"He’s just always putting 100% in. He squeezes every last drop of joy out of every moment. That is amazing to be around. It’s like an amazing and inspiring energy."

In the film, Dustin plays an eccentric toy store owner who bequeaths the Emporium to a seemingly unprepared Natalie.

"Mr Magorium is definitely a mentor and a playmate for her," explains the 26-year-old.

"He’s very like a child in his ability to imagine and live through his imagination but doesn’t make it as an immature thing, but just as a way of life, a choice.

"And so in a way, he’s a model for her. He makes her live in that world too when he’s alive and his decision to depart sort of forces her to move into that world herself."

Biography

Portman was born Natalie Hershlag in Jerusalem, Israel. Her father, Avner Hershlag, is an Israeli doctor specializing in fertility and reproduction. Her mother, Shelley Stevens, is an American homemaker who now works as her agent. Portman's maternal ancestors were Jews from Austria and Russia and her paternal ancestors were Jews who immigrated to Israel from Poland and Romania. Her father's grandparents died in Auschwitz and her Romanian-born great-grandmother was a spy for the British during World War II.

Portman's parents met at a Jewish student center at Ohio State University where Portman's mother was selling tickets. Portman's father returned to Israel, but the two corresponded and were married when Portman's mother visited Israel a few years later. When Portman was three years old, the family moved from Israel to the United States, where her father pursued his medical training. The family lived in Washington, D.C. in 1984 where she attended Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, relocated to Connecticut in 1988, and then settled permanently in Syosset, New York in 1990.

Portman has said that although she "really love the States... my heart's in Jerusalem. That's where I feel at home". Portman is an only child and very close to her parents, who are often seen with her at her film premieres.

courtesy of wikipedia
December 2007

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