What are your fav “Off Hollywood” films

The 20-year-old actress is a junior at Harvard, a straight-A student (she reportedly aced her SATs while appearing on Broadway in "The Diary of Anne Frank") who sprinkles her conversation with phrases such as "social Darwinism" and "interdependent sense of self" and knows more about Kant than Cannes. But she's cool enough in between exams to hang with her friend Moby, attend Britney Spears' birthday party and dye her hair bright "Run Lola Run" red for Halloween.

Straddling the line between celebrity and normalcy, no small feat for anyone, is even more daunting for adolescents. Rehab centers are littered with former juvenile actors. Heartbreak, unscrupulous agents and legal tussles with family members are footnotes to many a career. But if anyone can keep her wits, it's Portman, even as her face graces billboards for the latest "Star Wars" summer blockbuster, in which she reprises her role in 1999's "Phantom Menace" as Amidala.

Here, in her "bubble," as she calls it, Portman is just another highly accomplished, fiercely smart student who has a cellphone in her pocket, is multilingual (she speaks Hebrew, French and Japanese), likes to make lists, says she's "not good with boys," has Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms" on her night table and says her favorite movie of last year was the sweet French farce "Amélie."

Her petite stature (she's just over 5 feet tall) and nubile, almost luminescent beauty give her a vulnerable quality.

"You should have checked me out when I was 13," Portman says, laughing. "I was locking myself in the bathroom, threatening to kill myself -- being so mean to my mom and fighting with her all the time. Girls are horrible. I hope I have boys."