List of The Facts of Life Characters - Natalie Green

Natasha "Natalie" Green (born Natasha Letisha Sage Green) was played by Mindy Cohn. Natalie's best friend on the show was Tootie, as they were close in age. Natalie's age is around 13 at the start of the series.

Natalie's most defining physical attribute was that she was large-figured. However, Natalie had a healthy self-image and was once quoted as saying, "Who wants to be a skinny pencil? I'd rather be a happy Magic Marker!"

Natalie is Jewish just like Mindy Cohn is in real life and her faith was featured in several episodes. In one she celebrated Hanukkah while the others celebrated Christmas. Her heritage was highlighted when Dr. Green, her father, died unexpectedly; Natalie's bottled-up grief was a continuing storyline for several episodes.

Even though she did not fit the mold of a traditional beauty, Natalie was involved in many storylines regarding sex. In an early episode, she dated a boy who spread a rumor that Natalie was easy. In another episode, whilst coming home from a costume party she was nearly the victim of a sexual assault. Toward the end of the series in the controversial episode, "The First Time", she became the first of the girls to have sex when she slept with her boyfriend Snake on their one-year anniversary.

Natalie was a budding writer and wrote for the Eastland School newspaper. In the twenty-fifth episode "Bus Stop" of the sixth season, she graduated Eastland in 1985. However, she doesn't go to college immediately and takes a year off to travel across the country on a bus. Her family and friends were initially dismayed because she turned down an admission offer from Princeton University to go "Greyhound." After a year, Natalie decides to attend Langley College, and became a reporter for the local newspaper in Peekskill. She went to New York City towards the end of the series and decided to stay and pursue her writing career. On the episode in which Natalie visits the SOHO loft she will eventually call home, her future roommates include Richard Grieco and David Spade. (The episode, which aired in 1988, was originally set up for Mindy Cohn to transition into a spinoff series, but the plans never materialized). In the TV-movie, The Facts of Life Reunion, she is with her boyfriend and has a run-in with her ex. Her current boyfriend then proposes to her by phone.

Natalie was the only one of the girls who was adopted. In one episode, Blair successfully tracked down Natalie's birth mother, but Natalie — who realized that her adoptive parents were her true parents, even though they weren't biologically related to her — refused to answer the phone and hear the results of the search, instead inviting her friends to taste the cake "my mother made." However, thanks in part to an argument with her adoptive mother during a 1982 episode, the subject arose once again, and it would be her adoptive mother who would finally reveal to Natalie who her biological mother was. Natalie tracked her down and met her, but as before, she still considered the mother who had raised her to be her true mother, even after sharing with her the meeting she had with her biological mother.

Natalie also appears in two episodes of Diff'rent Strokes: "The Slumber Party" and "The Older Men".