Superstar Beauty Secrets! | Glamour

Natalie Portman admits her hair hasn't always looked this good. She famously had it shaved for V for Vendetta, and the growing-out period was killer. "I have naturally curly hair, and when it was really short, I looked like Little Orphan Annie," she says. Mark Townsend, Matrix celebrity stylist, came to the rescue; he used a tiny flat iron all around for a glam pixie style. "He knows how to make my hair look soft, feminine and pretty," raves Portman, 26, whose sixteenth-century period film, The Other Boleyn Girl, is out this December. Townsend's other clients include Penelope Cruz and Cate Blanchett, but success hasn't gone to his head—thanks, in part, to Portman's Grandma Bernice. "She came with us to the Today show recently," recalls Townsend, who did casually chic waves on Portman for the occasion. "Ten seconds before the segment, she asks Natalie, What about your hair?' Natalie says, It's done. You've been sitting there the whole time, Grandma. We spent two hours getting ready.' And her grandmother just looks at me and says, She's going on television with hair like that?'"