Portia de Rossi Biography

Portia Lee James DeGeneres (born Amanda Lee Rogers; 31 January 1973), known professionally as Portia de Rossi , is an Australian-American actress, model and philanthropist, best known for her roles as lawyer Nelle Porter on the television series Ally McBeal and Lindsay Fünke on the sitcom Arrested Development. She also portrayed Veronica Palmer on the ABC sitcom Better Off Ted and Olivia Lord on Nip/Tuck. She is the wife of American stand-up comedian, television host and actress Ellen DeGeneres.

Early life

Born Amanda Lee Rogers in Horsham, Victoria, Australia, she is the daughter of Margaret, a medical receptionist, and Barry Rogers. Her father died when she was nine. She was raised in Grovedale, a suburb of Geelong, Victoria. As a child, she modelled for print and TV commercials. She adopted the name Portia de Rossi at the age of 15, stating in 2005 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 has admitted through her teens and young adulthood, she has struggled with anorexia.

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, California, United States and had 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.

She attracted 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"2006, de Rossi starred as Lindsay Bluth Fünke on Fox Television's critically acclaimed, Emmy-winning series Arrested Development.

She also 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. 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).

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. 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." The show was not picked up to series for the 2012-2013 season.

Six months 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.

Personal life

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". In a 2010 interview on Good Morning America, she explained that as a young actress, she was fearful of being exposed as a lesbian.

From 2000 to 2004, de Rossi dated singer 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. 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. In 2005, she opened up publicly about her sexual orientation in interviews with Details and The Advocate. She became engaged when DeGeneres proposed with a three-carat pink diamond ring. They were married at their Beverly Hills home on 16 August 2008, witnessed by their mothers and 17 other guests. On 6 August 2010, Portia filed a petition to legally change her name to Portia Lee James DeGeneres. The petition was granted on 23 September 2010. She became a US citizen in September 2011.

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. She had struggled with the eating disorders for four years while filming Ally McBeal. To promote the book, she appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

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 for children with alopecia and other medical conditions that cause hair loss. She has also supported fundraising efforts for FXB International, an African AIDS relief organisation, and The Art of Elysium, an art foundation for terminally ill children. An avid animal lover, de Rossi also supports Alley Cat Allies, an organisation dedicated to protecting and improving the lives of cats. De Rossi and wife Ellen DeGeneres have also been vegan since 2008, and are strong supporters of the Gentle Barn, a California-based sanctuary for abused animals.

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1994	Sirens	Giddy
1995	The Woman in the Moon	Shauna
1995" 1996	Too Something	Maria Hunter	TV series (22 episodes)
1996" 1997	Nick Freno: Licensed Teacher	Elana Lewis	TV series (22 episodes)
1997	Veronica's Closet	Carolyn	TV series (1 episode: Veronica's First Date)
1997	Scream 2	Sorority Sister Murphy
1998	Astoria		TV movie
1998	Girl	Carla Sparrow
1998	A Breed Apart	Lana Collins	TV movie
1998" 2002	Ally McBeal	Nelle Porter	TV series (89 episodes) Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series (1999) Nominated"?Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series (2000"?2001)
1999	The Invisibles	Joy
1999	American Intellectuals	Sarah
1999	Stigmata	Jennifer Kelliho
1999	Ally	Nelle Porter	TV series (12 episodes) Ally McBeal spin-off
2001	Women in Film	Gina
2001	Who Is Cletis Tout?	Tess Donnelly
2002	The Glow	Jackie Lawrence	TV movie
2002	The Twilight Zone	Laurel Janus	TV series (1 episode: Dead Man's Eyes)
2003	Two Girls from Leemore
2003	America's Prince: The John F. Kennedy Jr. Story	Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy	TV movie
2003	Mister Sterling	Lauren Barnes	TV series (2 episodes)
2003	I Witness	Emily Thompson
2003	The Night We Called It a Day	Hilary Hunter
2003" 2006, 2013	Arrested Development	Lindsay Bluth Fünke	TV series (53 episodes) TV Land Award for Future Classic (2003) Satellite Award for Best Actress " Television Series Musical or Comedy (2005) Nominated"?Satellite Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Comedy or Musical (2004) Nominated"?Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series (2005"?2006)
2004	Dead & Breakfast	Kelly
2005	Cursed	Zela
2007" 2009	Nip/Tuck	Olivia Lord	TV series (10 episodes)
2009	The Shift	Denise Moore
2009" 2010	Better off Ted	Veronica Palmer	TV series (26 episodes)
2012	Mockingbird Lane	Lily Munster	TV pilot