Natalie Portman, CANNOT act

Where the Heart Is - horrid
Anywhere But Here - putrid

I must respectfully disagree.

 

Portman was excellent in "Beautiful Girls", and she was so young then. Lucas is not known as an "actors" director. He is more concerned with how shots look, special FX and the like.

 

Just because Lucas isn't known as an 'actors' director doesn't give an actor permission to have a poor performance. This is when their skills are truly tested. Besides, there are many non-'actor' directors in Hollywood, just because they happen to be doing porn doesn't mean ... oh, never mind ...

 

Whoever thinks Natalie Portman can't act doesn't know what they are talking about. She said her lines nicely. She played the part of Amidala with accurate professionalism.

I was reading an article the other day in the Rolling Stones magazine and it was said that people were just unimpressed by her acting in AOTC.

Well, I for one feels Natalie is a great actress and people should leave her alone.

 

Just because Lucas isn't known as an 'actors' director doesn't give an actor permission to have a poor performance. This is when their skills are truly tested. Besides, there are many non-'actor' directors in Hollywood, just because they happen to be doing porn doesn't mean ... oh, never mind ...

What if the actress didn't feel she nailed it the first time, but the director thought it was good enough and doesn't want to do another take? The old cliche for an actor to say is, "What's my motivation?"

And as crazy as it may seem to you, a good director DOES motivate the actors. And DOES preach the importance of multiple takes. But GL is NOT an actors director and on top of that, is VERY busy with parts of the movie that are more important to him. Star Wars is and always will be a space opera, more "Flash Gordon" than "Gone With the Wind". If only everyone could check their pretenses at the door and enjoy a fun film...

 

NP can act...

...just not in SW

 

it is dependent on the director

acting in ANH is horrible, absolutely horrible. when I first saw the movie I cringed because it was so bad. acting in ESB with the same cast but a new director is light years ahead of ANH. I credit Irvin Kershner for the acting in ESB, not the actors. so I also credit Lucas for screwing up natalie's acting, not natalie or the rest of the cast, who are actually quite good.

 

Alot of what she says, it's just, weird how it leaves her mouth. She's so quite most of the time. BY my, right out of bead her hair looks so nice?

She's the Anti-Bedhead.....

you know, when she talks to anakin in the morning, right out of bed. you know. SH'es got perfect hair!!.

 

i guess i'm is the only natalie fan on the whole forum. you people is suck!

 

C'mon people, it's Lucas' fault. Natalie did the best with what she had. First of all, who here read the book? And how much to the lines in the book match the lines in the movie? If you exclude the cut scenes, it is dead on. Why? BECAUSE LUCAS GIVES NO FREEDOM TO HIS ACTORS. Look at the scene in the meadow. Hayden and Natalie almost start their lines before the other one finishes. Thats a sign of a director who wants to go by the script. Not allowing the actors to improv doesn't allow them to get into character, so they are basically just spitting out whats in the script.

And for the person who said
Well how nice of you All good acting in Star Wars is because the actor is great..any bad acting is because of Lucas. I love that logic.

There's good acting in Star Wars?

 

HAHA Natlaie Portman cannot act. I think thats funny. It is true, since she doesn't react to Anakin touching her back whatsoever, but I guess she may be one of those actresses who requires a lot of direction. And since we all know george, we all know she won't get any direction

 

I think Natalie is a fine actress. Just watch her other movies and you will see why. She was very good in The Professional and Where The Heart Is and I think she does a great job in Star Wars.

 

Great, here we go again. Natalie does a fabulous job of playing a boring, stoic character. Padme is a politician: practical, level headed, and haughty. Padme is used to people treating her with respect. If you pay close attention to Natalie's performances in each film, the only times she really starts to portray real emotions is whenever she's around Anakin. In TPM she smiles and laughs around Anakin, he brings out the kid in her, in AOTC by the end, after she's finally admitted she's in love with Anakin, she starts to behave with a fire that reminds me of Leia. Who would think the Padme from the beginning of ATOC could have delivered her "No I call this Aggressive Negotiations" line with as much spunk as she does? It wouldn't have happened.

Natalie plays a politician who has spent her entire life not being emotially detached. Her rationality, and emotional detachment makes her the perfect politician. She acts more like a Jedi than Anakin does. Anakin is responsible for bringing out the real person in Padme, which explains her line "I've been dying a little bit every day since you came back into my life." The old stoic Padme is dying. Anakin's restlessness and willfulness is rubbing off on her. She's always been a little bit of a rebel, she's just been waiting for the right circumstances in her life to turn herself around.

I think Padme in beginning of EP III is going to be a far different person than we've seen so far in the PT. I think she'll be as spunky as Leia. I think we are meant to not really like stoic Padme much. But tragically when Anakin, the person who lights that fire within her, is gone, the old Padme will return. And we will all be grateful, because Stoic Padme will have enough sense to allow Obi-Wan to take Luke away from her, thereby giving a ray of hope for the galaxy.

 

No, I think Portman can act.

It's the script and direction that can make a decent actor look bad.

In some cases though a good actor can make a script better. I don't thin Portman is that talented to do that with the Lucas Scripts, and it is most likely just as hard for the more experienced actors as well.

 

Why all of a sudden are we complainging about things in AOTC. When it came out everyone was so pleased with it and now people are ripping it apart. Natalie did her best and that's all we can hope for.

 

I think the 'hating' for AOTC will really become rampant in another 4-5 months, about the same time when _everyone_ began hating TPM.

 

My problem with her acting is that she sometimes mumbles. I have only seen AotC once, and on that time I often could not hear what she was saying (particularly in the scene where she is packing to leave Coruscant).

 

Her performance in Episode I was BAD. (as Padme at least) If anyone thought that her bland portrayal of Padme was marvelous in TPM, please don't direct movies because I won't watch them.

In her *own* words, she said she gave up on Episode I because she felt uncomfortable and bored. It shows, and it bugs the heck out of me that she chose to get lazy on a SW film. Out of all the films she slacks off here.

Her AOTC performance is better, but it's still weak. I have a feeling she is not as big a fan of SW as it seems. She doesn't care about all these Jedi battles and lasers and aliens. She's just sticking it through and going through the motions (not to mention getting paid $3.5 million a pic).

I think George hand-plucked her for her looks, but it would've been better to find an good actress who genuinely LOVES Star Wars. The kind that has seen the films numerous times and can recite whole scenes. That's the kind of enthusiam I want. Natalie had never even SEEN a Star Wars film before.

 

Natalie can act, and anyone who says otherwise needs to watch her in Beautiful Girls, where she pretty much upstages everyone else on screen. Older actors mind you.

From what I have seen, Natalie can act rather well in anything but Star Wars. The bottomline is GL sucks as an acting director. Heck, just look at TPM DVD's documentary; he's more concerned with speeding up production than getting quality performances. He wants some form of delivery on film so he can stick it into a computer and get the FX started. That was not something that existed back in the OT days. They had to shoot with the sets and FX created through practical means and it took less time!
Anyway, back to Natalie. I think she is one of the most talented actresses available right now, even though her doing a film is rare since she goes to school most of the time. What disturbs me is that most of the general populace does not watch the films she demonstrates her abilities in, they only watch SW. Therefore, most of the nation thinks that this talented young woman is a basd actress when it's all GL's fault. Problem is, with SW films, they're right! Sorry if I seem anti-GL, but it really hurts when Natalie sucks.

 

Star Wars is 20 times more important than Beautiful Girls. She needs to bring her A-game to Star Wars, not leave it behind.

Now her spiritless performance in AOTC and TPM will be forever burned onto film and will be watched for the next 100 years. Thanks again, Nat!

 

Don't blame Natalie. If George says that her acting is great then she will think is is and do the next seen. You should be growling at GL not Natalie.

 

Then I have your permission to growl at GL? Thanks. I've been wanting to do that for so long, but I always get slammed for heresy if I say anything bad about the man as if he was perfect.

Yes, I blame Nat and George. George has too much on his hands, and I always thought someone should've helped him direct the actors.

 

Johnwilliams00 said it best!!!!! Natalie is not motivated like everyone else. C'mon, who needs motivation to be in a Star Wars movie?????????? Ian, Liam, Christopher Lee, are versatile actors who can handle anything. Ewan, Hayden, and Sam, although good actors are more motivated by just being in Star Wars and participating in a set of movies that really impacted them 25 years ago.

Natalie just doesn't fall into either category. I mean look at the joke Lucas pulled on her with Jimmy Smits. She's lost in the whole Universe and doesn't even know where her character fits. And just because we say she's not versatile doesn't mean she can't act, she's just not comfortable in Star Wars. She has said so herself.

 

Natalie never saw the SW films before taking on the role. She only watched them beforehand. Also look at the films she's done before. She is a very artsy film actress. I've read she mostly had problems trying to understand how to act in the blue screen environment. Ewan has often expressed similar issues, and rumored to have thrown tantrums off the set, since he's more of a stage actor as well.

I think considering Natalie feels completely out of place in this kind of acting environment, she did an ok job. She actually expresses a lot of emotion in her scenes w/ Hayden, it's just very subtly emoted. She seems to be getting a little more comfortable w/ each film. We can only hope George'll spice up her character for EP III.

It also goes to show you how Fabulous Hayden is. He is able to seemlessly move in and out of the scenes, never once do you feel like he's trying desperately to figure out what is going on in the film. Best example of this is look at how he perfectly stares at Watto. He far outshines Natalie overall. But maybe that's the point. Padme isn't supposed to outshine Anakin. She's there to pick up his broken pieces.

 

Natalie can't take all the blame for her performance in AOTC. But letting her entirely off the hook doesn't make sense either. She hasn't done anything great since Beautiful Girls. I didn't see her on stage in Ann Frank or the thing she did in Central Park, but I imagine she was poised and beautiful.

Portman could become a real star by trading exclusively on her limitations, letting herself be typecast as the uptight but beautiful rich girl. Maybe she took a role as an uneducated pregnant girl to expand her range, but her performance came off like an uptight but beautiful rich girl playing an uneducated pregnant girl on tv.

AOTC should have worked, because Portman was cast as herself, more or less. Multitalented go-getter started young in a career that took on a life of its own after rapid, early success. That's why it's so strange that Portman seems so disengaged. She ought to have understood Padme, and identified closely with the character.