Early life

De Rossi, born Amanda Lee Rogers in Horsham, Victoria, Australia, is the daughter of Margaret, a medical receptionist, and Barry Rogers. Her father died when she was nine years old. 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 Grovedale College and the University of Melbourne, where she studied law.

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

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 part in the film Scream 2. During this time in the United States, de Rossi worked diligently to replace her Australian accent with her current American one.

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).

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 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 2012-13 season.

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.

In July, 2014, ABC confirmed de Rossi was joining season 4 of Scandal.

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 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. 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 DeGeneres, whom she met backstage at an awards show. She reportedly said "The first time I saw Ellen's tight ass, I knew she was the one." 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. 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 United States citizen in September 2011.

In 2010, de Rossi published her 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.

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

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

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1994	Sirens	Giddy
1995	The Woman in the Moon	Shauna
1997	Scream 2	Sorority Sister Murphy
1998	Girl	Carla Sparrow
1999	The Invisibles	Joy
1999	American Intellectuals	Sarah
1999	Stigmata	Jennifer Kelliho
2001	Women in Film	Gina
2001	Who Is Cletis Tout?	Tess Donnelly
2003	Two Girls from Leemore	Blind Woman
2003	I Witness	Emily Thompson
2003	The Night We Called It a Day	Hilary Hunter
2004	Dead & Breakfast	Kelly
2005	Cursed	Zela
2009	The Shift	Denise Moore
2014	Unity	Narrator	Documentary
2015	Now Add Honey	Beth Morgan	comedy

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1995-96	Too Something	Maria Hunter	Main cast 22 episodes
1996-97	Nick Freno: Licensed Teacher	Elana Lewis	Main cast 22 episodes
1997	Veronica's Closet	Carolyn	1 episode: "Veronica's First Date"
1998	Astoria		TV Movie
1998	A Breed Apart	Lana Collins	TV Movie
1998-2002	Ally McBeal	Nelle Porter	Main cast 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	Ally	Nelle Porter	Main cast 12 episodes Ally McBeal spin-off
2002	The Glow	Jackie Lawrence	TV Movie
2002	The Twilight Zone	Laurel Janus	1 episode: "Dead Man's Eyes"
2003	America's Prince: The John F. Kennedy Jr. Story	Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy	TV Movie
2003	Mister Sterling	Lauren Barnes	2 episodes: "Wish List" and "Final Passage"
2003-2006, 2013	Arrested Development	Lindsay Bluth Fünke	Main cast 68 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, 2013)
2007-09	Nip/Tuck	Olivia Lord	Recurring cast (season 5) 10 episodes
2009-10	Better Off Ted	Veronica Palmer	Main cast 26 episodes
2012	Mockingbird Lane	Lily Munster	TV Pilot
2014	Sean Saves the World	Jill	1 episode: "The Joy of Ex"
2014-present	Scandal	Elizabeth North	Series Regular (Season 4-);

Awards and nominations

Year	Award	Category	Work	Result
1999	Screen Actors Guild Award	Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series	Ally McBeal	Won
2000		Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series		Nominated
2001		Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series		Nominated
2004	TV Land Award	Future Classic Award	Arrested Development	Won
	Golden Satellite Award	Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Comedy or Musical		Nominated
2005		Best Actress in a Series, Comedy or Musical		Won
	Screen Actors Guild Award	Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series		Nominated
2006		Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series		Nominated
2014		Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series		Nominated

Charities

Portia de Rossi supports the following charitable causes: Arts Education, Underprivileged Children, Children, AIDS, Health Education, Education, Poverty, Cancer, Adoption, Animals.

[ Source: Wikipedia ]