Who is Portia de Rossi

Portia Lee James DeGeneres (born Amanda Lee Rogers; January 31, 1973,) known professionally as Portia de Rossi, is an Australian actress, best known for her roles as lawyer Nelle Porter on the television series Ally McBeal and Lindsay Bluth Fünke on the sitcom Arrested Development. She also portrayed Veronica Palmer on the ABC sitcom Better Off Ted.

Early life

Portia de Rossi was born Amanda Lee Rogers in Horsham, Victoria, Australia, the daughter of Margaret, a medical receptionist, and Barry Rogers. She was raised in Grovedale, a suburb of Geelong. 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.

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 several TV shows, and a permanent role in Nick Freno: Licensed Teacher, 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 Nell 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. And in 2005 she portrayed a fortune-teller named Zela in the Wes Craven thriller Cursed.

From 2007–2008, de Rossi appears in Nip/Tuck's fifth season as Julia McNamara's girlfriend Olivia Lord.

From 2009–2010, de Rossi played Veronica Palmer on the ABC show Better Off Ted, in which she plays a high strung, hypersexual and controlling character.

de Rossi will reprise her role as Lindsay Bluth Fünke in 2012's film adaptation of Arrested Development.

Portia was named number 69 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.

Personal life

Portia de Rossi is openly gay. She was married to documentary filmmaker Mel Metcalfe, from 1996 to 1999, as part of a plan to get a green card, but says that "it just obviously wasn't right" for her. In a 2010 interview on Good Morning America she explained that as a young actress she was fearful of being exposed as gay. From 2000 to 2004, de Rossi dated singer Francesca Gregorini, daughter of actress Barbara Bach and stepchild of Ringo Starr. She said most of her family and Ally McBeal cast mates 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 as de Rossi began dating talk show host and comedienne 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 to Ellen DeGeneres after the talk show host proposed to her with a three-carat pink diamond ring. They were married on August 16, 2008 at their Beverly Hills home, with 19 guests including their respective mothers.

She struggled with the eating disorder anorexia nervosa for four years while filming Ally McBeal.

De Rossi supports a variety of charitable organizations, including Locks of Love, a group that provides human hair wigs at no cost for children with complete alopecia and other medical conditions that cause hair loss. She has also supported fundraising efforts for FXB International, an African AIDS relief organization, and The Art of Elysium, an art foundation for terminally ill children. An avid animal lover, de Rossi also supports Alley Cat Allies, an organization dedicated to protecting and improving the lives of cats.

In her free time, de Rossi enjoys riding horses.

On August 6, 2010, she filed a petition to legally change her name to Portia Lee James DeGeneres.The petition was granted on September 23, 2010.

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 being misdiagnosed with lupus. To promote the book, she appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portia_de_Rossi