[8] She grew up in Grovedale, a suburb of Geelong, Victoria, and modelled for print and some TV commercials as a child.

[10] De Rossi garnered international attention when she joined the main cast of Ally McBeal in 1998, playing lawyer Nelle Porter.

That same year, she portrayed an Australian reporter who inspires a protest against Frank Sinatra during a concert tour in The Night We Called It a Day.

In February 2012, it was announced that ABC had ordered a pilot for a new drama series The Smart One, one of whose executive producers was Ellen DeGeneres, and which featured de Rossi in a leading role.

The actress was to star as a "brilliant and successful woman who begrudgingly goes to work for her less-brainy but more popular sister – a former beauty queen, weather girl and now big-city Mayor.

Six years after the series was canceled by Fox, filming for a revived fourth season of Arrested Development began in August 2012, and de Rossi reprised her role as Lindsay Bluth Fünke.

In July 2014, ABC confirmed that de Rossi was joining season 4 of Scandal, in the role of Elizabeth North.

[2] In May 2018, de Rossi announced on The Ellen DeGeneres Show that she would be retiring from acting, though she later elaborated that she would make an exception for future seasons of Arrested Development.

[17] From 2000 to 2004, de Rossi dated director Francesca Gregorini, the daughter of Barbara Bach and the stepdaughter of Ringo Starr.

[19] On 6 August 2010, de Rossi filed a petition to legally change her name to Portia Lee James DeGeneres.

[22] In 2010, de Rossi published her autobiography, titled Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain, within which she wrote about the trauma and turmoil that she had experienced in her life, including suffering from anorexia nervosa and bulimia and being misdiagnosed with lupus.

[34] De Rossi and DeGeneres are major supporters of The Gentle Barn,[35] a California sanctuary for physically abused animals.