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Natalie Portman Says 'Star Wars' Almost Killed Her Acting Career

Mark Hamill spent the eighties on stage, to get away from the Star Wars thing apparently.

He had a poor choice of comeback movie though, Slipstream in 1989. Guyver/Mutronics wasn't that great either. I also remember him from a great episode of Amazing Stories, and a couple episodes of SeaQuest. If the early nineties is when his voice acting career kicked off, as well as the Wing Commander appearances, then he's never been out of work.
 
Well I think Portman and the others said at the time that they often tried to inject more warmth and humor into their performances, to try to recapture the fun character dynamic of the OT, but Lucas would always quash that and insist that they be more formal and serious.

Because apparently only farmboys, smugglers and princesses are supposed to be any fun to watch in this world.
 
davejames said:
Well I think Portman and the others said at the time that they often tried to inject more warmth and humor into their performances, to try to recapture the fun character dynamic of the OT, but Lucas would always quash that and insist that they be more formal and serious.

Because apparently only farmboys, smugglers and princesses are supposed to be any fun to watch in this world.
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I think that Lucas, like Gene Roddenberry, had bought too much into the fan mythology that had arisen around his work as something Important and Meaningful, so he took it too seriously. Both of them, in their later works, tried so hard to be the visionaries that their fans imagined them to be that they forgot how to be the storytellers that had inspired the fans in the first place.
 
well she was pretty stiff and wooden in episode 1 but I think that was Lucas's direction and not her personally because she loosened up when she went from queen to senator in episode 2 and had more confidence as padme.
 
Dales said:
well she was pretty stiff and wooden in episode 1 but I think that was Lucas's direction and not her personally because she loosened up when she went from queen to senator in episode 2 and had more confidence as padme.
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^And then she got downgraded to a glorified piece of background furniture in RotS. I Give her credit for trying but she clearly has so little to work with in that one.
 
Whenever I re-watch the prequels (which is a habit I really need to break), Natalie Portman's performance is always the one that most sticks out to me as being completely horrible. The thing is, I know she can act, but Padme Amidala is by far one of the single most boring and wooden characters I've ever seen.
 
Christopher said:
davejames said:
Well I think Portman and the others said at the time that they often tried to inject more warmth and humor into their performances, to try to recapture the fun character dynamic of the OT, but Lucas would always quash that and insist that they be more formal and serious.

Because apparently only farmboys, smugglers and princesses are supposed to be any fun to watch in this world.
Click to expand...

I think that Lucas, like Gene Roddenberry, had bought too much into the fan mythology that had arisen around his work as something Important and Meaningful, so he took it too seriously. Both of them, in their later works, tried so hard to be the visionaries that their fans imagined them to be that they forgot how to be the storytellers that had inspired the fans in the first place.
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Certainly true of Roddenberry and sounds pretty likely for Lucas as well. It's also important to remember that neither of them were exceptionally great writers(with the success of their franchises being almost equally down to all the other people involved) and a decade or so later their creative flare seemed to have died.
 
I guess it was probably harder for the younger actors trying hard to do what was asked. I noticed in the behind-the-scenes Ewan MacGregor always seems to be half-listening to anything Lucas said and always seemed a bit sarcastic about it all which maybe helped. I can't imagine Ford not being the same way what with the classic "I Know" story and his "You can write this shit but it doesn't mean you can say it" comments. The greener actors looking for more hands on direction were probably a bit lost.
 
There are actresses who could only dream of being punted on to a major and critically-acclaimed Wachowski Bros film as their third choice of role. Not all eyes will weep. :D
 
RoJoHen said:
Whenever I re-watch the prequels (which is a habit I really need to break)...
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The next time you feel that dark impulse, go to YouTube and look up the "Mature Edition" fan-edits. In the Phantom Menace, he cuts out 95% of Jar-Jar's dialogue and most of the Gungan silliness, which makes the final battle much more tolerable. He removes the two-headed announcer from the pod-race completely, and all of the battle-droid dialogue ("roger, roger").

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urGXrdR88k4[/yt]

In "Attack of the Clones", he removes all of the really bad interaction between Anakin and Padme on Naboo and replaces it with deleted scenes where Anakin meets Padme's fam,ily, and it really works a lot better. He also removes all 0of the embarrassing CGI crap with Threepio on Geonosis.

He brings all three movies in under two hours, while inserting deleted scenes into each one. I've always said that there was a great trilogy waiting to get out of the prequels, all they needed was better editing, a script polish and a director that could actually coax a performance out of an actor, and these cuts prove me 33% right.:lol:
 
I've tried watching some of those edits before, but the problem is even if you cut out all the ultra-cheesy and terrible stuff... you're still stuck with a bunch of lifeless characters in a pretty dull and overly serious story.

In the end it just doesn't seem worth all the effort.
 
Portman was also, like, 15 or 16 when she started shooting The Phantom Menace.

Young actor or actress with very little training or experience is rough and wooden, particularly in an effects-heavy production? I am shocked.
 
Turtletrekker said:
I've always said that there was a great trilogy waiting to get out of the prequels, all they needed was better editing, a script polish and a director that could actually coax a performance out of an actor, and these cuts prove me 33% right.:lol:
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davejames said:
I've tried watching some of those edits before, but the problem is even if you cut out all the ultra-cheesy and terrible stuff... you're still stuck with a bunch of lifeless characters in a pretty dull and overly serious story.
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Yeah, it's that pesky other 66%. :lol:
 
I had no problem with her in The Phantom Menace, but she was atrocious in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. Part of it is probably Lucas' weakness with dialogue and actors delivering it, but I can't allow Portman to completely escape blame and I do think she can be inconsistent in general. Granted, her Star Wars character made little sense, though, considering she married someone who committed genocide against the Tusken Raiders.
 
The mother of Luke Skywalker was almost passed over completely in the OT, getting a brief mention when he is talking to Leia in Return of the Jedi. She's almost an afterthought. Not important aside that she's the mother of the hero of the story. Luke never seems to have asked about her before deciding to talk to Leia about her mother.

So they really didn't have much to go with at the start. Just who was the mother of Luke Skywalker and why did Anakin Skywalker fancy her enough to make babies?

Though in putting Portman in that role, I can see why Anakin would fancy that.
 
davejames said:
I'd say there's a difference between what the original actors went through and what the prequels actors went through. For the originals it was much more about typecasting and being closely identified with such beloved characters in a hugely popular series of movies...

While for the prequel actors it was much more about people suddenly starting to question their acting abilities after seeing them be so incredibly stiff and lifeless in a series of very mediocre movies. Along with probably a certain stigma that came with that association.
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That's almost kinda funny.

Before the prequels, an actor/actress was thought of as one with potential. Afterward it's like:"Was everything before these prequels a fluke? Am I a bad performer?"

Of course, Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen both disappeared after the prequels. Some of that can be attributed to audience backlash.
 
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