`Star' Streak

A vocal defender of her native Israel, Natalie Portman is one of the
most talented, admired and sought-after young actresses around.

Hayden Christensen
as Anakin Skywalker
and Natalie Portman
as Padme Amidala
in "Star Wars:
Episode II — Attack
of the Clones."
"Why there is evil
in the world, and
what purpose
it serves, will keep
imitative mythologies
like Star Wars'
alive," Port-man says.

NAOMI PFEFFERMAN
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles

A

month before the release of her new film,

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones,
Natalie Portman immersed herself in a
more terrestrial conflict: defending Israel.
The Jerusalem-born actress — who plays Darth
Vader's squeeze Queen Padme Amidala — objected
in her Ivy League college newspaper to a law stu-
dent's essay condemning Israel. Faisal Chaudhry's
essay decried a "racist colonial occupation ... [in
which] white Israeli soldiers destroy refugee camps
of the brown people they have dispossessed."
Says Portman, who immigrated to the United
States at age 3: "It just angered me that someone
who is obviously intelligent enough to attend law
school could be so misinformed."
So the porcelain-skinned actress dashed off an April
12 letter to the editor dismissing the essay as "a dis-
tortion of the fact that most Israelis and Palestinians
are indistinguishable physically. The Israeli govern-

meet itself is comprised of a great number of
Sephardic Jews, many of whom originate from Arab
countries. ... Until we accept the fact that we are con-
stituents of the same family, we will blunder in believ-
ing that a loss for one 'side' — or as Chaudhry names
it, a 'color' — is not a loss for all humankind."
The vivacious, effusive Portman says her letter
gleaned "positive response on campus from both
Arabs and Jews." But she was less pleased with an
April 29 Time magazine story comparing Amidala to
the United Nations Secretary-General.
The piece suggests "Padme, in a scene cut from
the film, sounds like Kofi Annan pleading for
Palestinians when she tells the Senate, `If you offer
the separatists violence, they can only show us vio-
lence in return!"
Portman, her bubbly voice suddenly hushed, says,
"I'd hate to think I'm ever portraying Kofi Annan as
a benevolent queen." She pauses, then adds with
feeling, "But I agree violence is not an answer."
Long before Portman was proving the pen is
mightier than the lightsaber, she grew up in a Star

Wars-less household on Long Island. The daughter
of an Israeli fertility doctor and an American-born
artist, she didn't see George Lucas' original Star Wars
films, which were released in the late 1970s and
1980s.
She reflects the flicks, while paradigms of
American pop culture, weren't iconic for her pre-
dominantly Israeli family. "I do remember a couple
cousins running around on the Jewish holidays, imi-
tating Chewbacca," confides Portman, who visited
Israel twice yearly and has dual citizenship.
Back in her American suburb, Portman says she
attended a Conservative Jewish day school through
seventh grade "to preserve my Hebrew and my sense
of Israel more than anything religious."
Like most Israelis, her parents were proud but sec-
ular Jews, so young Natalie did not become bat
mitzvah. "Because I had hardly ever been to temple,
it just would have seemed like a false thing to do,"
she says.
"Also, I think the way people were bat mitzvahed
where I lived seemed much more to be an excuse for
a party and for people to write checks to you and to
have an extravaganza than a religious experience."
The young actress — who was "discovered" by a
Revlon scout in a pizza parlor at age 11 — was dis-
mayed when her budding career caused classmates
to spurn her. "In seventh grade, I cried every day
when I came back from shooting The Professional,"
she says of her debut film.
Portman switched schools and went on to portray
gritty characters light-years away from her nice
Jewish-girl self. She was a beguiling preteen in
Beautiful Girls, a pregnant Oakie in Where the Heart
Is, Susan Sarandon's beleaguered daughter in

Anywhere But Here.
One critic described her as a "ravishing little
gamine," though her protective parents wouldn't let
her do sex scenes (or use her real surname —
"Portman" is her grandmother's maiden name).
Nevertheless, she insists, "I don't think you have
to equate who you are with the characters you play
— that's your job as an actress. And since nice
Jewish girls from the suburbs don't make very inter-
esting movies, at least I'll never have to play myself."
Portman's most personal role was the lead in The
Dial), of Anne Frank on Broadway in 1998, for which
she received rave reviews while maintaining straight "Ks.
"I grew up with the Holocaust, because my grand-

`STAR' STREAK on page 106

t

5/10
2002

105