After appearing in the trilogy of Star Wars prequels, Natalie Portman says “no director” wanted to work with her.
Quotes from a 2014 piece in New York Magazine have recently resurfaced thanks to Far Out Magazine. There, Portman recalled the fallout from playing Padme Amidala in The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith.
“Everyone thought I was a horrible actress,” Portman said. “I was in the biggest-grossing movie of the decade, and no director wanted to work with me.”
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The Phantom Menace grossed over $1 billion dollars upon its release, but Episode One, and the subsequent movies in the trilogy, were widely panned by critics – and used as shorthand for unnecessary prequels thanks to its melodramatic twists, middling CGI, and move away from what made the original Star Wars trilogy so popular.
A separate 2008 interview in The Independent also saw Portman recall a negative backlash to her stint in the Star Wars prequels, but had a measured approach to her performances.
“With almost every performance, I feel like I’ve failed on some level,” Portman said at the time. “But I also think it’s very human to feel that when you mess up, you get more out of it than when you succeed.”
Thankfully, Portman soon turned her career around with acclaimed performances in 2003’s Cold Mountain and 2004’s Closer, the latter of which netted her a Golden Globe win and Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
The 2010s proved more of a success for Portman, with the actor winning Best Actress for Black Swan. She even dipped back into franchise waters as Jane Foster in Thor and Thor: The Dark World, before reprising the role for a (seemingly) final time in Thor: Love and Thunder.
Portman is next appearing in Good Sex, the Lena Dunham-directed romcom, alongside Mark Ruffalo.
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