Portia de Rossi - Actress
Age: 53
Country: Australia Occupations:
Actress
Portia de Rossi is an Australian-American former actress, businesswoman, and philanthropist best known for her roles in hit television series like Ally McBeal and Arrested Development.
Born Amanda Lee Rogers on January 31, 1973, in Horsham, Victoria, Australia, she grew up in Geelong and began modeling in commercials as a child. At age 15, she legally changed her name to Portia de Rossi, choosing "Portia" from William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and adopting an Italian surname to reinvent her identity.
She gained international recognition in the late 1990s playing the sharp, ambitious lawyer Nelle Porter on Ally McBeal (1998–2002). She cemented her place in comedy history as Lindsay Bluth Fünke, the self-absorbed heiress in the critically acclaimed sitcom Arrested Development (2003–2006, 2013, 2018–2019). Her other prominent screen roles include executive Veronica Palmer in Better Off Ted (2009–2010) and Chief of Staff Elizabeth North in the political thriller Scandal (2014–2017).
In 2010, de Rossi published her deeply personal memoir, Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain, which chronicled her long battle with anorexia nervosa, bulimia, and the pressure of keeping her sexuality secret during the early years of her career in Hollywood.
She retired from acting in 2018 to shift her focus to business and the arts, founding General Public, an art curation and tech-driven publishing company that uses specialized 3D printing techniques to create textured reproductions of paintings.
In her personal life, de Rossi has been married to comedian and television host Ellen DeGeneres since August 2008. Together, they are active in animal rights activism and conservation efforts, notably establishing The Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund in Rwanda.