Portia Lee James DeGeneres (born Amanda Lee Rogers; 31 January 1973),
known professionally as Portia de Rossi is an Australian actress, model
and philanthropist, known for her roles as lawyer Nelle Porter on the
television series Ally McBeal and Lindsay Fünke on the sitcom Arrested
Development. She also portrayed Veronica Palmer on the ABC sitcomBetter
Off Ted and Olivia Lord on Nip/Tuck. She is married to comedian/talk
show host Ellen DeGeneres. 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. 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 has admitted, in an
interview she gave to the London Daily Mail, to having struggled with
anorexia throughout her teens and young adulthood, from which she
credits the love of