Natalie portman's 2-kids everything she's said about parenting
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- UPDATED JUNE 02, 2024
by Tasha Mayberry
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Natalie Portman is a mom of two. The actress shares her kids, son Aleph and daughter Amalia, with her ex-husband, Benjamin Millepied. The pair were married for 11 years before separating in July 2023 and finalizing their divorce in February 2024. [Natalie’s] biggest priority has been ensuring a smooth transition for her children,” a source close to the exes told PEOPLE in March 2024. “She and Ben really love their kids and are equally focused on being the best co-parents they can be. Nothing is more important.”
While Portman manages to keep Aleph and Amalia out of the spotlight, the two kids are well aware of their mom’s high-profile career. They even encouraged her to take the role of Mighty Thor in Thor: Love and Thunder. I feel like it’s the phase of my career where I’m really trying to just impress my kids,” Portman told Variety in June 2022.
Aleph, 12
Portman and Millepied welcomed their first child, son Aleph, on June 14, 2011. The Oscar winner reflected on her first year of motherhood in 2012, sharing with Elle Canada how Aleph had improved her life. “I’ve got more patience, definitely,” she said at the time. “Just by looking at everyone and realizing that someone’s their mother.”
A few years later, Portman told Harper’s Bazaar that she had sought parenting guidance from actress and fellow mom Cate Blanchett. “Very early on, I asked [Cate] about being a parent,” the Black Swan star shared in 2015. “I said, ‘How do you do it? You’re a mom. You’re the best at what you do.’ She said, ‘You just do. Stressing about it doesn’t help.'” Portman and her son have bonded over a love of sports. According to the self-dubbed “soccer mom,” Aleph is a “ferocious soccer player.” He’s also a fan of the National Women’s Soccer League expansion team Angel City FC, of which Portman is a founder and majority owner.
“It’s the best thing to get to watch him and his friends root for our players,” she told PEOPLE in 2023. The actress has also emphasized the importance of her children growing up with female athletes as role models. “I think that for all kids, it’s so influential to see female athletes be celebrated as they deserve. I mean, we grew up as girls being expected to idolize male athletes, and we did,” she said. “If you see excellence, you can be in awe of it no matter who is being excellent. So, I think that for all our kids, it really gives me tingles thinking about how different their world will be growing up with icons we have on our team.”
Amalia, 7
On Feb. 22, 2017, the Star Wars actress gave birth to her second child—a baby girl. A week after welcoming Amalia, Portman’s rep confirmed the news to PEOPLE. “Mother and baby are happy and healthy,” Portman’s rep shared. Portman initially revealed she was expecting her second child when she stepped out at the Venice Film Festival premiere of her movie Planetarium in September 2016. Her growing bump was visible in a white gown as she walked the red carpet. After receiving “feminist baby books” as gifts following Amalia’s arrival, which, according to Portman, “no one” gave her when Aleph was born, the actress was inspired to write her own children’s book: Natalie Portman’s Fables, putting her own spin on classic children’s tales. “It felt sad to explain to a small child that girls and women have so many obstacles or why they are treated differently, before they’ve even started experiencing the world,” she wrote in a letter on her book’s website. She added that she began “changing the pronouns in my daughter’s classic books” before deciding to write her own stories. Aside from reading, the activist, who narrated Disneynature’s Dolphin Reef documentary, revealed in 2020 that both of her kids have already taken a liking to animals.
“My kids really love animals,” she wrote in PEOPLE’s inaugural Planet Issue. “Last year we went to Australia because my best friend got married there, so now we’re all pretty fascinated by the platypus.” The same year, Portman opened up about motherhood again in a since-deleted Instagram post for Mother’s Day. She wrote in the caption, “I’m blessed by my kids who turned me into a mom and make me smile and laugh every single day. Who make me appreciate my mom even more for all the invisible things she did for me that I realize now as I try to live up to her mothering.”
Natalie Portman and Benjamin Millepied’s Relationship Timeline
Actress Natalie Portman met dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied in 2009 while on set for her iconic role in Black Swan. He’d been hired to help her train as a convincing ballet dancer and to choreograph dance routines for the movie. They had chemistry quickly during these training sessions and started dating soon after shooting wrapped. They married shortly after and share two children: their son, Aleph, born in 2011, and their daughter, Amalia, welcomed in 2017. In the summer of 2023, news broke that Millepied had allegedly conducted an extramarital affair. A source told People in June that they might still be working on repairing their relationship. “He knows he made an enormous mistake, and he is doing all he can to get Natalie to forgive him and keep their family together,” they explained.
In March 2024, Portman’s rep confirmed to People that her divorce from Millepied was finalized in France that February. Portman had quietly filed for it eight months prior and kept it secret. Here’s a complete timeline of Portman and Millepied’s relationship, from start to end.
