Natalie Portman has said she would get “upset” upon being called by her stage name at school.
In a Vanity Fair interview, the actress said her classmates would sometimes address her using Portman instead of her actual name, which is Natalie Hershlag.
This was because she had debuted on the big screen at just the age of 13 with Léon: The Professional, and had become quite famous in circles.
Speaking of balancing both the worlds, the star said, “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.”
Natalie continued, “I would get upset if someone at school called me Natalie Portman. 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.”
“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. There are multitudes of ways I see myself,” she explained.
Once the celebrity had children, the way she perceived this started changing.
Natalie reflected, “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.”
