Natalie Portman Confesses How The Star Wars Prequels Almost Ruined Her Career

With films like "Black Swan" and "Closer", Natalie Portman has proven to be one of Hollywood's biggest actresses. But for a time, she appeared in George Lucas' dreaded Star Wars Prequels. Portman has recently come out to admit how being part of the prequels almost ruined her career.
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Portman first appeared as a highly impressive child actress in the 1994 Luc Besson's masterpiece "Léon: The Professional" a breakout role that put Portman in the map of showbiz. It was after that, in 1999 when she appeared in the Star Wars prequels. That was the time when everybody associated her with the rest of the Star Wars prequels, which were just awful.

Portman recently spoke with New York Magazine about the ways that the late film director Mike Nichols redeemed and influenced her career, Portman quotes: 

"Star Wars had come out … and everyone thought I was a horrible actress. I was in the biggest-grossing movie of the decade, and no director wanted to work with me. Mike wrote a letter to Anthony Minghella and said, ‘Put her in Cold Mountain, I vouch for her.’ And then Anthony passed me on to Tom Tykwer, who passed me on to the Wachowskis."

Natalie Portman in "V for Vendetta"

Her roles in films such as in "Cold Mountain" allowed her to showcase her strengths in serious acting. But it's in Mike Nichols' "Closer" that reminded us of how magnificent an actress she is. For "Closer", she  won a Golden Globe Award and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. On the other hand, "V for Vendetta" proved that she could still work with genre films with the kind of performance that is mindblowingly powerful, and even won her a Constellation Award for Best Female Performance and a Saturn Award for Best Actress.

Her career ultimately led her to "Black Swan" which received critical praise and she earned her first Academy Award for Best Actress, her second Golden Globe Award, the SAG Award, the BAFTA Award and the BFCA Award in 2011. We can expect her to work on more marvellous films. She's got an action-drama Western film "Jane Got A Gun" directed by Gavin O'Connor and an untitled Terrence Malick project coming up in 2015.

As for Star Wars, well the rabid fanbase was finally happy when Disney was able to yank (rescue) it out of its (abusive) creator, George Lucas' hands to the tune of 4 Billion Dollars. Now, the rights to the Star Wars franchise is in the hands of Disney. Fans are generally optimistic that the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens which will come out December 2015 till be good enough to wash away the stink of the prequels.

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