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Portia de Rossi (born January 31, 1973) is an Australian actress best known for her roles as lawyer Nelle Porter on the television series Ally McBeal and as Lindsay Bluth Fünke on the television series Arrested Development. A beautiful, exotic-looking blonde with pronounced eyebrows, Portia de Rossi first caught viewers' attention playing a virginal teenager who poses as a nude art model in "Sirens" (1994). After relocating to the USA from her native Melbourne, Australia, the actress quickly found work as the love interest of star Eric Schaeffer in the short-lived Fox sitcom "Too Something" (1995) and later spent one season (1996-97) as a co-worker of "Nick Freno: Licensed Teacher" on that The WB comedy. After a turn as a drug addict in the independent "The Woman in the Moon" (1995), de Rossi landed the high profile (but decidedly tiny) role as a sorority sister in "Scream 2" (1997). She further added to her growing reputation by joining the cast of the hit Fox comedy "Ally McBeal" in the fall of 1998. As Nell Porter, de Rossi added a mix of cool allure and sultry heat to the fantasy comedy. During and after the series the actress toiled in a variety of feature films of varying quality and distinction before landing her defining role on the quirky Fox sitcom "Arrested Development" (2003 - ) playing the pampered Lindsay Bluth Fünke. de Rossi proved she was game for just about anything, perfectly conveying her character's poor parenting skills, odd marriage and routinely disastrous attempts to seduce another man into her open relationship. During the critically hailed but ratings-challenged series' run de Rossi's private life also became more public when she entered into a romantic relationship with comedienne Ellen Degeneres. De Rossi was born Amanda Lee Rogers in Melbourne, Victoria, the daughter of Margaret, a medical receptionist, and Barry Rogers. She was raised in Grovedale, a suburb of Geelong. As a child, she modeled for print and TV commercials. She took the name Portia de Rossi at a young age: "When I was 15, I changed it legally. In retrospect, I think it was largely due to my struggle about being gay. Everything just didn’t fit, and I was trying to find things I could identify myself with, and it started with my name. I picked Portia because I was a Shakespeare fan (Portia is the character in The Merchant of Venice). De Rossi because I was Australian and I thought that an exotic Italian name would somehow suit me more than Amanda Rogers. When you live in Australia, Europe is so far away and so fascinating, so stylish and cultured and sophisticated." (Note: Portia de Rossi was also the name of the mother of the eminent 16th-century Italian poet, Torquato Tasso.) A talented student, she studied at Geelong Grammar School and Melbourne Girls Grammar School, then the University of Melbourne Law School, but left before finishing the course to pursue an acting career. She supports Locks of Love, a group that buys wigs for children with medical hair loss. 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 had guest roles on TV shows before landing a role in the film Scream 2. She attracted international attention when she joined the main cast of the Ally McBeal TV series in 1998 playing lawyer Nelle Porter. She remained with the show until its end in 2002. Portia appeared in several small pictures, including The Woman in the Moon (1995), the made-for-TV Perfect Assassins (1998), The Invisibles (1999), and American Intellectuals (1999), in addition to her small roles in Scream 2 (1997) and Stigmata (1999). However, it was on the small screen that Portia got her big break in 1998. Having remembered her from Mixed Nuts, a 1996 pilot, David E. Kelley, creator of Ally McBeal, asked Portia to audition for the role of Nelle on the hit FOX series (the role had originally been offered to Vanessa Marcil, but she turned it down to do Beverly Hills, 90210). For Portia, it was the role of a lifetime; she had been following Ally religiously since the show's 1997 debut. She won raves for her performance on Ally McBeal and even shared the 1999 SAG Award for "Best Ensemble in a Comedy" with her costars. Although Ally went off the air in 2002 after a five-season run, it did not take long for Portia to find another TV role. In 2003, she accepted the part of Jason Bateman's sister Lindsay on the FOX series Arrested Development, for which she won a Golden Satellite Award as Best Actress in a Series, Comedy or Musical in 2005. Her most recent film projects include Dead & Breakfast (2004) and Cursed (2005). 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. From 2007-2008, de Rossi appears in Nip Tuck's 5th season as Julia McNamara's new girlfriend Olivia Lord. She also portrayed John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, in a made for TV movie. De Rossi, who was married for two years to documentary filmmaker Mel Metcalfe, is now openly gay. From 2000 – 2004, de Rossi dated singer Francesca Gregorini, daughter of actress Barbara Bach and stepchild of Ringo Starr. De Rossi dodged media questions about her sexual orientation and the relationship during this period. De Rossi was rarely pictured with Gregorini in public. In a September 2005 magazine interview with The Advocate, de Rossi said that most of her family and Ally McBeal cast mates learned she was gay because of tabloid pictures of de Rossi and Gregorini in 2001. The couple broke up in late 2004 as de Rossi began dating talk show host and comedian Ellen DeGeneres. In 2005, de Rossi officially came out and opened up about being gay in interviews with Details and The Advocate. De Rossi is currently living with Ellen DeGeneres in Beverly Hills, California. De Rossi was named number 64 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 People Magazine special edition. TV Guide includes De Rossi and partner, Ellen Degeneres in their Power A-List couples in 2007. De Rossi is also a recovering anorexic whose low weight was 82 lbs for her five foot seven height. Photos from her in this time are often seen on pro-ana websites. |
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