Portia de Rossi

Portia Lee James DeGeneres , 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 and Olivia Lord on Nip/Tuck. Born Amanda Lee Rogers in Horsham, Victoria, Australia, she is the daughter of Margaret, a medical receptionist, and Barry Rogers. Her father died when she was nine. She was raised in Grovedale, a suburb of Geelong in Victoria, Australia. 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. Her first significant role was playing a young and impressionable model in the Australian 1994 film Sirens.
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