Morena Baccarin Was Once Natalie Portman’s Understudy, More Fun Facts About the ‘Greenland’ Actress

Sci-fi siren Morena Baccarin is once again teaming up with Gerard Butler in the post-apocalyptic survival thriller Greenland 2: Migration — the sequel to their 2020 production Greenland. In the new flick, the duo and their family are forced to leave their bunker and find a new home, five years after an interstellar comet left Earth in ruins.

Morena, 46, told Collider, “It was the hardest shoot of my life. Not the easiest, not the most fun. A really difficult experience. We were outside a lot. We shot in London, and we shot in Iceland. It was physically draining, emotionally draining.”

Here are 10 things you don’t know about the Stargate SG-1 alum.

1. She was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1979 — three years after her actress mother, Vera Setta, played a character named Morena in the movie O Vampiro de Copacabana.

2. Unsurprisingly, she’s fluent in Brazilian Portuguese, which was her first language.

3. She moved to New York City with her family at age 10.

4. Morena attended New York City Lab School for Collaborative Studies, where she was classmates with her future Homeland castmate Claire Danes.

5. While studying drama at the Juilliard School, she was Natalie Portman’s understudy in a New York Shakespeare Festival production of The Seagull.

6. She served as maid of honor at the 2016 wedding of her Firefly costar Jewel Staite to Charlie Ritchie.

7. She’s gotten hitched twice — to filmmaker Austin Chick, who she divorced in 2016, and current hubby Ben McKenzie, her costar on Gotham.

8. Breakfast is her favorite meal of the day, and she once admitted to Harper’s Bazaar that she’s a “big fan” of eggs over easy, toast and coffee.

9. An avid wine lover, she enjoys visiting California’s vineyard-rich Sonoma County.

10. If she wasn’t working as an actress, she might have chosen to pursue a career as a writer — or an astronomer.