I don’t know IRL, but in Hollywood, the extension -man seems to always be attached to a Jewish actor. (Hoffman, Altman, Bergman, Berman, Feldman, Goldman, Silverman, etc)
I know it’s a generalization, but it holds serve more often than not. It’s easier with “berg” or “stein” at the end, but even that’s not foolproof (see Goldberg, Whoopi)
As far as the double ‘N’ vs. single “N” (portman vs portmann), I always thought the double “N” indicated german descent in the person’s background, not necessarily Jewish… although I have met at least one jewish person who’s last name was -mann, so I don’t know what the standard is.
This is like the “sky” vs. “ski” ending for polish people and polish jews. Rule of thumb says that “sky” is jewish, while “ski” is polish. As a generalization, not an ironclad rule. There are always exceptions.
A few posters said that she acts like a diva. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen her act like a bitch, not that I follow Hollywood news all that closely though.
That would disappoint me because from what I have seen, she seems fairly humble for being a movie star.
Saw an surprising piece of trivia in Entertainment Weekly. They had a little piece about Portman’s movies since Black Swan. They mentioned The Other Woman, which was made in 2009 but not theatrically released until this year.
Its total domestic gross was $22,597.
The weird thing is that the people who saw it apparently liked it - it got a very high approval rating. However, maybe that reflects the fact that probably the only people who saw it are dedicated fans of Portman (or her co-star Lisa Kudrow or writer/director Don Roos).
I never heard of it, so I decided to check out why it made such a small amount of money. They aren’t kidding when they say limited release. According to BoxOfficeMojo, The Other Woman opened in 2 theaters, and in it’s 4 weeks was never in more than 9 theaters. I wonder why it took 2 years to get it released; it does have some big name actors in it (Portman and Kudrow). Guess it’s just one of those movies who couldn’t find a way to be seen. Or maybe it’s just bad.
Funny thing is that it was the publicity that almost ruined Black Swan for me. It had a low budget feel, and if I had discovered it as part of a low profile limited release, I would have been raving about it the next day. But after hearing so much about it, including Portman’s Oscar nomination, my expectations were a lot higher than than they should have been.
I was going to save this for Yule, but do you want me to send over those Portman & Knightley hookerboots now? I’ve got two I need to unload, as due to a glitch in their programming they can only have sex in threeways.
I was going to crack wise that, technically, it’s the baby who’s the bastard, but I decided that would be unevolved.
Y’know, Skald, you’re really generous with all of those hookerbots you keep sending out. If I didn’t know better, I’d assume that you had some ulterior motive for wanting your bots to be spread far and wide across the planet, in close proximity to particular people. And as it happens, I don’t in fact know better.
