Portia de Rossi

Portia de Rossi
de Rossi in February 2007
Born	Amanda Lee Rogers (1973-01-31) 31 January 1973 Horsham, Victoria, Australia
Nationality	Australian-American
Other names	Portia Lee James DeGeneres
Occupation	Actress, model, philanthropist
Years active	1994–present
Spouse(s)	Mel Metcalfe (m. 1996; div. 1999) Ellen DeGeneres (m. 2008)
Partner(s)	Francesca Gregorini (2000–2004)

Portia Lee James DeGeneres (born Amanda Lee Rogers; 31 January 1973), known professionally as Portia de Rossi /ˈpɔərʃə də ˈrɒsi/, is an Australian American actress, model and philanthropist, known for her roles as lawyer Nelle Porter on the television series Ally McBeal and Lindsay Fünke on the sitcom Arrested Development.^[1][2] She also portrayed Veronica Palmer on the ABC sitcom Better Off Ted and Olivia Lord on Nip/Tuck. She is married to American stand-up comedian, television host and actress Ellen DeGeneres. She currently stars on Scandal as Elizabeth North.

Early life

De Rossi, born Amanda Lee Rogers in Horsham, Victoria, Australia,^[3] is the daughter of Margaret, a medical receptionist, and Barry Rogers.^[4] Her father died when she was nine years old.^[5] She grew up in Grovedale, a suburb of Geelong, Victoria, and modelled for print and TV commercials as a child. In 1988, at the age of 15, Rogers adopted the name Portia de Rossi, by which she remains best known. In 2005, she explained that she had intended to reinvent herself, using the given name of Portia, a character from William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, and an Italian last name. She was educated at Melbourne Girls Grammar and the University of Melbourne, where she studied law.^[6]

She has admitted, in an interview she gave to the London Daily Mail, to having struggled with anorexia throughout her teens and young adulthood, from which she credits the love of Ellen DeGeneres for having saved her.^[7]

Career

Her first significant role was playing a young and impressionable model in the Australian 1994 film Sirens. Soon afterwards she moved to Los Angeles, and won guest roles on several TV shows, and a permanent role in Nick Freno: Licensed Teacher, before landing a role in the film Scream 2. During this time in the United States, de Rossi worked diligently to replace her native Australian accent with her current General American one.^[8]

She garnered international attention when she joined the main cast of Ally McBeal in 1998, playing lawyer Nelle Porter. She remained with the show until its end in 2002. In 2001, she starred in Who Is Cletis Tout? with Christian Slater. From 2003–06, de Rossi starred as Lindsay Bluth Fünke on Fox Television's Arrested Development. She portrayed John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, in the made-for-TV movie America's Prince: The John F. Kennedy Jr. Story in 2003 and an Australian reporter who inspires a protest against Frank Sinatra during a concert tour in The Night We Called It a Day, also in 2003.

In 2005 she portrayed a fortune-teller named Zela in the Wes Craven thriller Cursed. From 2007–2008, de Rossi appeared in Nip/Tuck's fifth season as Julia McNamara's girlfriend, Olivia Lord.

In 2009 and 2010, de Rossi played the high-strung and controlling Veronica Palmer on the ABC show Better Off Ted. In 2011 she appeared in Better Off Ted cast member Malcolm Barrett's music video for "Revenge of the Nerds", spoofing her character Veronica in a cameo (alongside other cast members of the cancelled series).^[9]

She ranked 69th in Stuff's 100 Sexiest Women, 31 in Femme Fatales' Sexiest Women of 2003 list, 24 in Maxim's 100 Sexiest Women List in 2004, and in late 2006, the magazine Blender listed her as one of the hottest women of film and TV.^[10] In May 2007, she was featured as one of 100 Most Beautiful in a People magazine special edition. TV Guide included her and Ellen DeGeneres in their Power A-List couples in 2007.

In February 2012, it was announced that ABC had ordered a pilot for a new drama series The Smart One, executive produced by Ellen DeGeneres, and featured de Rossi in a leading role. The actress was to star as a "brilliant and successful woman who begrudgingly goes to work for her less-brainy but more popular sister – a former beauty queen, weather girl and now big-city Mayor."^[11] The show was not picked up to series for the 2012-13 season.^[12]

Six years after the series was canceled by Fox, filming for a revived fourth season of Arrested Development began on 7 August 2012 and de Rossi reprised her role as Lindsay Bluth Fünke. The season consists of 15 new episodes which debuted at the same time on Netflix on 26 May 2013. Each episode focuses on one particular character, with de Rossi's Lindsay, featured in episode 3, "Indian Takers" and episode 8, "Red Hairing", and also appearing in several other episodes of the season.^[12]

In July, 2014, ABC confirmed Portia de Rossi is joining season 4 of Scandal.^[13]

Personal life

De Rossi (left) and her wife, Ellen DeGeneres, in September 2012.

De Rossi was married to documentary film-maker Mel Metcalfe from 1996 to 1999, initially part of a plan to get a green card, but she did not go through with it. She said that "it just obviously wasn't right for me".^[6] In a 2010 interview on Good Morning America, she explained that as a young actress, she was fearful of being exposed as a lesbian.^[14]

From 2000 to 2004, de Rossi dated director Francesca Gregorini, the daughter of Barbara Bach and the stepdaughter of Ringo Starr. She said that most of her family and Ally McBeal castmates did not know she was a lesbian until tabloid pictures of the couple were published.^[6] She declined to publicly discuss the relationship or her sexual orientation at the time.

De Rossi and Gregorini broke up in late 2004 because de Rossi began dating Ellen DeGeneres, whom she met backstage at an awards show.^[15] In 2005, she opened up publicly about her sexual orientation in interviews with Details and The Advocate. She and DeGeneres became engaged when DeGeneres proposed with a three-carat pink diamond ring.^[16] They were married at their Beverly Hills home on 16 August 2008, witnessed by their mothers and 17 other guests.^[17] On 6 August 2010, Portia filed a petition to legally change her name to Portia Lee James DeGeneres.^[18] The petition was granted on 23 September 2010.^[19] She became a United States citizen in September 2011.^[20]

In 2010, de Rossi published the autobiography Unbearable Lightness which talks about the turmoil that she has experienced in her life, including suffering from anorexia nervosa and bulimia and being misdiagnosed with lupus.^[21] She had struggled with the eating disorders for four years while filming Ally McBeal.^[15][22] To promote the book, she appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

In 2013, de Rossi announced that she and DeGeneres were not planning to have children.^[23]

Philanthropy

De Rossi supports a variety of charitable organizations, including Locks of Love, a group that provides human hair wigs (made from donated ponytails) either free of charge or on a sliding scale based on their own guidelines^{[24][25][26][27]} for children with alopecia and other medical conditions that cause hair loss.^[28]

She has also supported fundraising efforts for FXB International,^[29] an African AIDS relief organisation, and The Art of Elysium,^[30] an art foundation for terminally ill children. An avid animal lover, de Rossi also supports Alley Cat Allies,^[31] an organisation dedicated to protecting and improving the lives of cats.^[32] De Rossi and wife Ellen DeGeneres have also been vegan since 2008, and are strong supporters of the Gentle Barn,^[33] a California-based sanctuary for abused animals.

Filmography

Film

Television

Awards and nominations

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Portia de Rossi.

• Portia de Rossi at AllMovie
• NewsWeekBlog; accessed 16 February 2015.