Natalie Portman explains why she changed her name early on in her career

Natalie Portman is one of the most talked-about women in the world, and from her Academy Award winning career, to her "very non-Hollywood life" in Paris with her husband Benjamin Millepied and two children, the actress makes non-stop headlines. 

This has been particularly true this past year, with Portman and her family faced with a barrage of speculation around her and Millepied's marriage, something that she has since described was "terrible".

Portman has always lived an extremely private life, choosing not to use social media and even changing her name back when she started acting all those years ago, in an effort to separate her private and public life.

Yes, on closer inspection, 'Natalie Portman' isn't actually the award-winning actress' real name, with her actual moniker being, 'Natalie Hershlag'.

Opening up about the name change in a recent interview with Vanity Fair while promoting her new film May December, Portman explained the decision and how it was extremely important to her.

“I got very protective of it very early on," she explained of her privacy in the interview. "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," she recalled, with the actress starting work from the age of 13. "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 continued: “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.”

We will continue to update this story.