Amanda Lee Rogers aka Portia biography

Real biography: Contents1 Introduction2 Life Story3 Career4 None of Your Business if (window.showTocToggle) { var tocShowText = "show"; var tocHideText = "hide"; showTocToggle(); } Introduction

Portia de Rossi is an Australian actress 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. She is also known for her role as talk show host Ellen Degeneres's "Steadman."

Life Story

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.

Other options considered were "Lady Windermere von Furstenburg X," and "Mo'Nique" (the latter was taken).

A talented student, she left the lecture theaters of the University of Melbourne Law school to pursue an acting career. She supports "Locks of Love," a group that buys wigs for children with medical hair loss. Previously, children with medical hairloss had been getting their wigs from Raquel Welch's "Sexy Bob" series, which caused the children to all look like Oompa Loompas.

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 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.

In 2001, she starred in Who is Cletis Tout? with Kuffs star Christian Slater. From 2003 to 2006, de Rossi starred as Lindsay Bluth Fünke on Fox Television's critically acclaimed, Emmy-winning series Arrested Development. Both Arrested and Christian Slater were cancelled.

In Nip/Tuck's 5th season, which is to start in October 2007, de Rossi will join the L.A. scene as Julia McNamara's new girlfriend. She also portrayed John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, in a made for TV movie. (TBS)

None of Your Business

De Rossi, who was married for two years to documentary filmmaker Mel Metcalfe (to get a green card), is now openly gay. From 2000 to 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. Portia was rarely pictured with Gregorini in public, but that's because Gregorini isn't the lovable marketing machine that is Ellen DeGeneres, whom de Rossi is currently shtupping.

In 2005, de Rossi officially came out and opened up about being gay in interviews with Details and The Advocate. In an ironic turn, she gave more details to The Advocate.

De Rossi was named number 64 in Stuff magazine's 100 Sexiest Women, 31 in Femme Fatales' Sexiest Women of 2003 list, 24 in Maxims 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. Great. Thank you so much, collective men's lifestyle publications. Once again you manage to flaunt women like objects and then pull them away with the old, but you don't have a vagina trick. Kinda like that Christmas when I got My Little Pony. That was a very, very sad holiday season.