Why Natalie Portman Would 'Get Upset' as a Child If a Classmate Called Her by Her Stage Name

Natalie Portman wasn't a fan of people calling her by her stage name at school.

While speaking to Vanity Fair for the outlet's 30th annual Hollywood issue, the Black Swan actress, 42, said there were times when her classmates would call her Portman instead of her real name, Natalie Hershlag. She made her film debut at 13 years old with Léon: The Professional, in which she starred as Mathilda.

"I got very protective of it very early on. I chose a different name when I started, which was kind of an interesting way that I separated identities," Portman said of how she's dealt with the public interest in her life over the years and how her attention towards it has changed.

"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 added. 

"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. And it’s not just two different versions, there are multitudes of ways other people see me, both public and private, and there are multitudes of ways I see myself," Portman went on. 

"Somehow the intersection of all of those are part of me, and it’s important to have all of those within me and as me, as opposed to being like, that’s some external thing, this is the real thing."

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The May December actress said that her views changed once she had children of her own. She shares Aleph, 12, and Amalia, 6, with French choreographer Benjamin Millepied, 46, whom she married in 2012.

"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. I have many interactions during my day as a public person. To exclude that from my experience is not real," she said.