NEW YORK, - Natalie Portman is going to hate herself in the morning. Hate
herself because here are dirty jeans and unread books piling up in her dorm
room. Hate herself because she is here, hundreds of miles away, curled up
on a sofa answering questions. "It's so overwhelming. I have to go home
after this and just cry over how much work I have," says the 18-year-old
Harvard University freshman, her eyes rolling heavenward.



"I'M HAVING THE MOST amazing, amazing, amazing time. But it's really hard:
balancing everything, taking care of yourself, setting your own limits,
scheduling for yourself," she says.



"And, on top of that, you have to balance doing, like, your housework, too
- which was never a part of the equation! All of a sudden, you have to do
laundry and clean your sheets and vacuum and wash the toilets."



That's an image: Natalie Portman, the star of the summer's biggest smash
hit and one of Hollywood's most sought-after young actresses, getting busy
with a bathroom scrubber.



And why not? After all, that, too, is Portman, a teenager who rises to
announce she needs "a potty break" or who preemptively apologizes for her
"stinky feet" upon shedding her Guccis.



"I'm just trying to be true to who I am and not let anyone define me except
for myself," she says. "I'm not trying to have a magazine call me the 'It
Girl.' "



Perhaps "Lit Girl" would be better. Portman may have ruled a planet in the
"Star Wars" prequel, but now she just wants to be one more stressed-out
frosh lugging books across the quad.



"I've been so lucky to have these opportunities, but we have a way of
making movie stars not mortal. We have a way of making them images rather
than people, and they're human beings," she says.




FRIENDS KEEP HER SANE



"They're extraordinary at what they do, but so is my father who is a
doctor, and no one ever freaked out about meeting him. No one would ever
shake shaking his hand, but people meet me and they'll shake and they'll
cry and that's weird - and that's wrong."



Keeping Portman sane are her new college pals: the youngest speaker at the
Million Man March; a cellist who has worked with Yo-Yo Ma; the
poet-slash-artist down the hall; her roommate, a star tennis player.



"You should hear these kids!" she says. "I mean, these people are just all
so fantastic in their own right that, you know, nothing I do is that
impressive to them that they'd be overly interested in me."



Portman is as cagey as she is self-deprecating. She's an on-the-record
vegetarian, a straight-A student, a teetotaler and an adamant nonsmoker.
Drugs? Don't even think about it.



"I don't like it when people just assume they can smoke around me or do
drugs around me," she says. "I think probably people view me as a
goody-goody, which isn't necessarily true. I mean, I'm a human being. I'm
not an angel."



There are areas, though, that Portman feels uncomfortable discussing. She
shies away from referring to her hometown on New York's Long Island and the
gossipy details of her life at Harvard aren't easily forthcoming. She's
even registered under a different name at school.



"I'M NOT TRYING TO HIDE"



"There's a great mystery to Natalie," says director Wayne Wang. "We're very
close on one level, but also there's a great mystery about her. I think
it's a certain kind of control that she has, a certain maturity."



Portman just laughs it off. The secrecy, she says, gives her insulation,
while the pseudonym - borrowed from her maternal grandmother - offers a
degree of anonymity when she's not acting.



"I'm not Superman - I'm the same person. I don't act differently when I'm
in my different worlds."

- PORTMAN



"I'm not trying to hide," Portman insists. "I'm not trying to have a split
life here. In no way am I trying to be two different people. I'm not
Superman - I'm the same person. I don't act differently when I'm in my
different worlds."



Her worlds intertwined last year while making her new movie, "Anywhere But
Here," in which Portman stars as a teenager mature beyond her years whose
mother (Susan Sarandon) is flighty and needy.



Yearning for adulthood and freedom, Portman's character goes through a
painful coming of age while also coming to terms with her mother and
finally escaping - to college.



In other words, life imitated art.



"It was interesting because it was like experiencing something exactly the
same way that I knew I was going to experience a year later," she says.
"Moving out is a big deal - it's a huge change in your life - so thinking
about it a little earlier was helpful."



DISCOVERED MUNCHING PIZZA



Portman is a delicate beauty with eyebrows that skate horizontally across
her face and almond-shaped eyes that hint at her Israeli heritage. Two tiny
moles stand sentry above either cheek.



Her striking looks led to her big break. Like an updated version of the
Lana Turner-found-in-a-drugstore fable, Portman was discovered while
munching pizza at a Long Island eatery.



"One day after dance class, I was in this pizza parlor and this guy just
happened to be there because he lived in the neighborhood," she said. "He
worked at Revlon, and he asked me if I was interested in modeling."



Nah. Natalie had other plans.



"I think it's kind of comforting to people to see that I have a complete
life outside of acting."
- PORTMAN



"I kept my cool," she recalls. "I told him that I wanted to act."



And so she did. After her debut in "The Professional," Portman got roles in
"Heat," "Everyone Says I Love You," "Beautiful Girls" and "Mars Attacks!"
She also starred on Broadway in "The Diary of Anne Frank."



Oh, and she never took an acting class.



"Sometimes when you kind of let things happen, it just works out," she
says. "That's why it's kind of fascinating to me that I've succeeded. I
think it's maybe WHY I've succeeded.



"Nobody likes someone who's pushy and whose world is going to be broken if
they don't make it, you know? I think it's kind of comforting to people to
see that I have a complete life outside of acting."



Then the undercover movie star leans in for a confession.



"I didn't have this undying need to be an actress. I didn't have that fire
within me ever - at any point. And still, I don't think I have that within
me," she says.



"I don't really know if acting would have ultimately become my passion as
an adult, or if there's something else I would have found had I not been in
the pizza shop. That's what college is helping me investigate."