Is That You, Natalie?

By Sora Song

It's tricky, the transition from child star to full-on femme. But NATALIE PORTMAN seems to be managing. Forget the 9-year-old assassin-in-training from The Professional and the teen Queen Amidala in The Phantom Menace. The new Natalie, 22, is playing a full-fledged adult in the epic Cold Mountain and in the upcoming film Closer, which is about relationships and sex. She's acting like an adult in real life too, with a brand-new Harvard degree, a deed on a house and the cover of next month's Vogue. Then again, Natalie sports a flapper-girl bob that's just like her girlish one, and when she donned a sheer gown for a recent event, her makeup artist had to point out that her nipples were showing. "We tried to put, like, Band-Aids on," Portman said, but she gave up and wore the dress anyway. So, O.K., she's not yet a woman.