Natalie Portman confesses she changed her name to avoid limelight

Natalie Portman has recently confessed she changed her name to prevent herself from public eye.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, the Atonement actress revealed her classmates would call her Portman in place of Natalie Hershlag as she made her movie debut at 13 with Léon: The Professional.

Natalie 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.”

“I would get upset if someone at school called me Natalie Portman,” recalled the Black Swan star.

Natalie mentioned, “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 pointed out.

Natalie stated, “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,” continued the May December actress.

Natalie added, “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.”

However, after having her own children, Natalie further said, “As I started having kids and a family, I started realising 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 added.