Ms Portman's keeping it real

Natalie Portman is an anomaly in Hollywood. Unlike her movie star contemporaries, you won't find this 18-year-old Israeli-born, New York-raised, Yale-educated actress strutting down every red carpet opportunity, clad in midriff-baring, attention-grabbing designer ensembles.

Portman doesn't date celebrities, period. She won't expose her breasts for the camera and, despite the ever-increasing pressure, refuses to pose semi-naked for men's magazine covers, considered de rigueur for any actress who regards herself as a serious player. Refreshingly, Portman is the antithesis of the stereotypical, surgically enhanced, vapid starlet.

'This is the way I see it: I don't make statements like, "I will never do a nude scene," because I recognise that that's the way I feel now. But in ten years time I might say, "Ooh, I really want to get naked on film,"' she laughs. Portman turned down the lead in Lolita in '97 for obvious reasons - the role was finally taken by an 18-year-old actress, and Portman was controversially only 15 at the time. She also refused the part that went to Christina Ricci in The Ice Storm because she felt the material was 'too dark'.

'Right now, I'm not willing to have family, friends and strangers watch me have sex on screen. I'm not saying anything against people who do those scenes because I definitely believe there's a place for sex and nudity in films. But as a young woman, I think it affects your life in such a major way,' she says. 'And there's always that thought of dirty-minded men who will freeze-frame and obsess over it.' She has also said, 'I am also not interested in doing any type of horror movie, or any other Jennifer Love Hewitt-type film.'

Holed up in a swanky hotel on Manhattan's Upper East side, Portman is endowed with the kind of effortless, classic beauty often compared to Audrey Hepburn. She is poised beyond her years, a factor which helped secure the much coveted role as Queen Amidala in last year's box-office phenomenon Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace, a role she will reprise in the next Star Wars movie. But today, Portman is here to promote her latest film, Where The Heart Is, in which she makes the leap from supporting actress to leading lady as a pregnant 17-year-old from America's rural midwest who is abandoned by her boyfriend and gives birth in a discount department store.

She's wearing tight-fitting black trousers and a baby pink T-shirt. Her hair is piled high in a ponytail, and she wears little make-up. 'This is the first time I'm playing a mother, not a kid, and I liked that,' she says. 'And the thing is, I don't know how long I'll be acting because I really don't have a competitive bone in my body,' she shrugs. 'Other actors are so passionate and aggressive, but I'm like, if they offer me something and I have the time, then great. But I don't pursue roles at all.'

Despite her ambivalence towards her multi-million dollar career, she has been one of Hollywood's most sought-after actresses from the time she made her big screen debut at the age of 12 when she starred as the precocious pre-pubescent in L?on. Her other roles have included Anywhere But Here opposite Susan Sarandon, Everyone Says I Love You and Mars Attacks! She also goes back to the theatre occasionally, most recently as the lead in the Broadway production of The Diary Of Anne Frank.

Her current role in Where The Heart Is sees her playing Novalee Nation, an uneducated, pregnant teen. It couldn't be further from her real life, although on some level Portman related to her. 'As an actor, it's always in the back of my mind, "Is this person friends with me because they really like me, or do they want to use me?" which is kind of sad. And with Novalee, she was wondering whether she was being used for sex,' she says. 'But I don't think she's dumb, she just never had the opportunity to be smart. But she matures, and it was great to do a role which is so different from what I've done before.'

Recalling a surreal moment that occurred during the filming of the movie, she says, 'We were filming at a Wal-Mart department store and they had Queen Amidala merchandising in the store!' she laughs. 'So we had to take the dolls away - otherwise it would have been a bit strange if my character was looking at her own face on the box!'

Portman's facial expressions and general demeanour range from childlike enthusiasm to that of sophisticated young adult. In many of her movies, her wardrobe has played a strong feature, and in Where The Heart Is, playing nine-months pregnant in the heat of summer really took its toll. 'Wearing the belly was uncomfortable but it was helpful to know how to manoeuvre myself differently as a pregnant person,' she says. 'But some of my costumes in Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace were so heavy that it required other people to help carry them to the set, let alone what that headpiece was like to wear - in the middle of the Australian desert!'