Natalie Portman

I've been crushin' on Natalie Portman lately. Nothing unusual there, as she is the apple of the eye of many socially-inept males, although that I'm twice her age certainly sends the needle on the creep-meter dancing. What can I say, my taste in women is the same as when I was in my twenties.

Anyhoo, Natalie is all over the media these days in conjunction with her role in V for Vendetta, which I plan on seeing tonight and will review here tomorrow. She's an intriguing presence--extremely enigmatic, but with a lack of pretension. I read a recent Vanity Fair profile that mentions she never wears leather and wore three-dollar earrings to some awards show. However, according to the same article, she can seem extremely aloof, as she didn't seem to overwhelm her Harvard classmates with warmth. But judging celebrities in this matter isn't fair. You piss one person off by not signing an autograph and they bad-mouth you forever.

Looking at Natalie's filmography, she must have first entered my view with Heat, as Al Pacino's daughter. I may have been aware of The Professional (or Leon), which was her first starring role, but I don't recall seeing the film all the way through, and she was only 11 for that film (my dirty-old-man-ness knows some lines). I certainly knew who she was for Everyone Says I Love You and Mars Attacks, and by then had probably noted when her 18th birthday would be. I have still not seen Anywhere But Here or the movie, the title of which escapes me at the moment, where she plays a white-trash teen who gives birth in a Wal-Mart.

She achieved superduper stardom with her roles in the second Star Wars trilogy, and I admire her for actually surviving them. She was given some of the most ham-fisted dialogue ever written, and she manages to speak it without giggling. She has countered that bubble-gum stuff with films like Garden State and Closer. I was iffy on both films (Closer I really didn't like at all), but her performances gave me new appreciation of her ability to create a character. In Garden State, despite her beauty, she was able to convince me that she was actually someone who had trouble connecting with people. As for Closer, her strip-club scene with Clive Owen was brilliant. Though she played a stripper giving a private dance, the sexuality was completely removed. I've had moments like that with strippers.

She's gone back to the blockbuster with V for Vendetta, though it certainly seems to be more thought-provoking than Star Wars. More on that later.