Who's next for Natalie?

Just read that Natalie Portman and her current (scary) manfriend Devendra Banhart split up...so I thought that I'd do a little celebrity match-making and come up with Natalie's next man.

She's a tough one...smart and well-educated (with a "wise beyond her years" vibe that apparently intimidates everyone from Jon Stewart to Peter Saarsgard), reasonably adept at staying out of the gossip headlines, socially conscientious (as a shoe fetishist I can vouch for the unadulterated sexiness of her vegan footwear line - and I was skeptical...I had visions of organic Crocs and glorified Chacos dancing through my head...I was refreshingly off-base. She knows shoes.) and adorable as all get out.

SO - she needs a man able to keep up with her forays into philanthropy, her vocabulary, her status as a budding style icon, and her dependably respectable career path ("The Other Boleyn Girl" notwithstanding). That means paparazzi hounds and brainless cover boys are out.

She tends to favor interesting, unconventionally good-looking types over the standard heartthrob genre. That rules out the George Clooneys and Jude Laws and, oh...Lance Armstrongs. At 27, she's (thankfully) above the MTV Reality Show-/CW Soap Opera-/Teen Choice-caliber fray. No Brody Jenner for Natalie. BUT, she's not yet - quite - to the place where dating thrice-divorced business lotharios or restauranteurs would necessarily suit her, either.

She's visible enough that it seems unlikely she'd date someone entirely out of the business - the "demands of movie-making schedules" would wreak decent havok on the day-to-day dating expectations of anyone unaccustomed to The Biz. That means musicians and actors and...politicians are on the list. Off the list: pro athletes. Unless they're also of the Harvard-educated persuasion, since, frankly, what suits Jessica Simpson will hopefully never suit Natalie (er...shoe design bit aside). So, Rugby extraordinaires or soccer stars are a possibility. Michael Phelps (heh, heh, heh): NOT a possibility.

What that leaves us with: well-educated, socially-conscious, reasonably famous men with impressive vocabularies. Oh dear.

As it happens, I googled "socially conscious famous people with good vocabularies."

The one result (given that google returned things like a list of miami nightclubs...?): Kanye West.

Hmmmm...while good-looking and creatively progressive he seems a little inflammatory for my Natalie (and I can afford to be picky - she's my favorite. We have the same birthday. Right). I'm worried he'd create unecessary drama. HOWEVER - he passes the "famous enough" test. And the man's got style. I'm giving him a 5 on my NNM (Natalie's Next Man" Meter.

I thought about Javier Bardem - he's mysterious, a bit smoldering, exotic, makes smart career moves, flies under the celebrity radar - but ultimately, I think that's a bit of a cop-out because she's already done the on-again, off-again thing with likewise smoldering and mysterious Gael Garcia Bernal. Too similar. Too obvious a pairing (she apparently spent a few weeks partying with Javier and friends in Madrid a few years back, however - so they're friends, in any event). He gets a 3 on the NNM Meter.

I thought Casey Affleck would have made a good candidate (he's Colombia-educated and suddenly, QUITE hunky...) but alas: married.

There's Daniel Craig. He's a theatre buff. Divorced. A respectable 40 years old. A confessed friend of Kate Moss, but I've yet to see pictures of him doing coke lines off of fancy prostitutes...ah, even a rugby player. Comes with the "I'm smarter and more interesting by virtue of my British accent" schtick that a girl finds difficult to resist. And since so many people seem to like proclaiming Natalie the next generation's Audrey Hepbern, I suppose the iconicism of dating James Bond would add just the right amount of poetic kitsch. Danny gets a 7 on the NNM meter.

I'm thinking her best bet would be Adrien Brody. He's a serious, "actor's actor," (that takes care of the career, they're both well-respected, taken seriously for their craft - both have lived in New York; he's unconventionally (and...um...devastatingly!) handsome. He's a huge hip-hop fan (aspiring producer, actually), so there's her musical connection (if the Devendra Banhard gig is an indication that she's a sucker for...musicians). He's got a sort of...rakish charm that would counterbalance the fact that Natalie can seem, at times, a little too...focused. Adrien gets a 9 on the NNM.

Done. Match made. I'll be expecting to see them both at the Oscars or something this year together. Or at a Kanye show.