Girls

Biography:

Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem, Israel to a doctor father and artist mother. Her family eventually settled in New York, where she lived until graduating from high school. She later attended Harvard University. At age 11, she was discovered in a pizza parlor, which lead to several stage roles. Her explosive film debut was in Luc Besson's Leon (1994), in which she played a young girl who is taken under the wing of a professional assassin (Jean Reno). Her intense performance lead to other acclaimed roles in Beautiful Girls, Heat, Mars Attacks!, Anywhere But Here, Where the Heart Is, Garden State and Closer, for which she received an Oscar nomination and won a Golden Globe.

Why We Love Her:

Natalie Portman is so ridiculously gorgeous, she's almost a distraction in the Star Wars movies. However, it's not just her looks that are first-rate: her Padme has the perfect balance of quiet dignity, strong-willed morality and young naivete. Her character's doom is inevitable once Luke and Leia are born, and we're sure we'll shed a few tears. Star Wars isn't the only movie where we've longed for Natalie - we knew she had something special the first time we saw her, way back in 1994 when she was waving a gun around like nobody's business with Jean Reno in Leon. Expect a lot more of Natalie in the future - she is, after all, not even 24.