Starting off at the age of 12 with an unforgettable performance in Léon: The Professional and picking up a coveted Harvard education and a relentless barrage of Star Wars prequel backlash along the way, Natalie Portman has emerged as one of the finest actors in film history.
Unfortunately, she’s not always given characters and stories that are worthy of her transcendent talents. For every great movie she’s starred in, there are a handful of mediocre duds and even a couple of trash-heaps. So, here are Natalie Portman’s five most iconic roles, as well as five movies that wasted her talents.
Updated on July 14th, 2022 by Colin McCormick: Natalie Portman’s return to the MCU in Thor: Love and Thunder helps to redeem the character of Jane Foster and add being a superhero to her long list of career accomplishments. But while Portman has given fans many iconic roles, she has also appeared in movies that have wasted her considerable talents with bland stories or uninteresting roles. As fans check out her turn as the Mighty Thor, they can also look back on her most memorable characters as well as the ones fans likely won’t remember at all.
The Most Iconic Natalie Portman Roles
Garden State (2004)
• Available to rent or purchase on Amazon Prime Video
The indie comedy Garden State stars Zach Braff as Andrew, a depressed young man who returns to his hometown for his mother’s funeral. While there, he meets an optimistic young troubled young woman named Sam who helps him find happiness and confront his past.
The movie is filled with quirky humor and Sam is responsible for so much of it. She is a sweet and charming character who audiences fall for immediately, yet Portman never loses grasp of the character as a human being dealing with her own struggles.
Closer (2004)
• Available to rent or purchase on Amazon Prime Video
Portman joined the impressive cast of Closer which also stars Julia Roberts, Clive Owen, and Jude Law. The movie is a story of four people, their romantic relationships, and the infidelity that tears them apart. Portman plays Alice, a young woman who deals with the pain of her own relationship falling apart.
Out of the star-studded cast, Portman steals the show as the story’s most sympathetic character. She is heartbreaking and alluring, becoming the heart of the story in many ways.
Léon: The Professional (1994)
• Available on Netflix and Hulu
Natalie Portman’s first-ever film role still stands as one of her best and most memorable. Portman starred as a young girl whose family is killed by a corrupt police officer (Gary Oldman). She is taken in by a deadly yet sympathetic hitman who teaches her his trade.
Portman immediately established herself as a huge acting talent with her performance as the young Matilda. She is innocent and heartbreaking, but also dark and badass. Despite being a child, she walks away with the entire movie.
Annihilation (2018)
• Available on Paramount+
Alex Garland’s Annihilation took a unique approach to depicting alien life on the screen. Instead of little green men who want to take over the world, Garland depicted extraterrestrials who have no logic or reason and can’t even really be comprehended by the human mind.
Natalie Portman stars as Lena, whose husband was killed by the aliens. She heads into “the Shimmer” and finds some truly haunting things. Portman’s committed performance takes viewers on the terrifying journey with her.
V For Vendetta (2005)
• Available on HBO Max
Based on the acclaimed graphic novel by Alan Moore, James McTeigue’s dystopian thriller V for Vendetta delivered a thrilling and thought-provoking adventure. Portman plays a young woman named Evie who is drawn into an elaborate revenge mission of a masked vigilante.
While it is V who popularized the Guy Fawkes masks in the movie, Portman is the audience surrogate as she is introduced to a world of corruption and dark secrets while following V. She gives an engrossing performance, including her unforgettable head-shaving scene.
Jackie (2016)
• Available to rent or purchase on Amazon Prime Video
In the underrated, poignant, masterfully crafted Jackie, Natalie Portman plays former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy at possibly the most difficult time in her life: the days directly following the assassination of her husband. Narratives about the Kennedy assassination are often told from the perspective of Secret Service agents looking for the culprit, or conspiracy theorists trying to figure out who really did it.
But the First Lady’s perspective is the most emotionally devastating — being right at JFK’s side when it happened, keeping a brave face in front of her kids, being in the public eye, etc. — and Portman plays her spectacularly.
Black Swan (2010)
• Available on Hulu and Amazon Prime Video
The crown jewel in Natalie Portman’s filmography, Black Swan might forever remain the actor’s finest film. Inspired by The Red Shoes and Dostoyevsky’s The Double, Darren Aronofsky needed a seriously dedicated, talented performer to bring Nina Sayers (and her doppelganger) to life on the big screen.
Portman was the ideal choice, subtly portraying both the tortured soul of an obsessive artist and the frazzled mental state of a woman with undiagnosed psychological issues. It is a haunting and captivating performance that earned Portman her first Oscar.
Roles That Wasted Natalie Portman’s Talent
Mars Attacks! (1996)
• Available to rent or purchase on Amazon Prime Video
The sci-fi comedy Mars Attacks! features a silly take on the alien invasion movie with an all-star cast. Portman plays the daughter of the President of the United States (Jack Nicholson) as the world contends with an attack from hideous Martians who seem to want nothing more than to destroy the world.
The movie is a quirky bit of fun from Tim Burton, but Portman doesn’t get much to do in the movie. Perhaps it’s not surprising given the massive ensemble that also includes Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Danny DeVito.
The Darjeeling Limited (2007)
• Available on Starz
Wes Anderson is a filmmaker known for assembling huge and talented casts for his movies. The Darjeeling Limited features Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman, and Owen Wilson as brothers embarking on a train trip in India.
Fans likely would expect Portman to have a solid role alongside the rest of the cast. Instead, she appears for a couple of seconds without any lines as Schwartzman’s ex-girlfriend. Though the movie itself is still good, it seems like a missed opportunity.
No Strings Attached (2011)
• Available on Paramount+
No Strings Attached was released in 2011, the same year as Friends with Benefits, a movie with an almost identical premise, and they’re both so painfully formulaic that anyone who saw both of them could be forgiven for not being able to distinguish one from the other.
What’s even more dreadful is that this travesty hit theaters the same year that Natalie Portman won an Oscar for her breathtaking performance in Darren Aronofsky’s psychological thriller Black Swan.
Your Highness (2011)
• Available on Hulu
On paper, a stoner comedy set in a Middle-earth-esque fantasy kingdom from the team behind Pineapple Express starring Natalie Portman sounds fantastic. Unfortunately, in execution, Your Highness is pretty awful.
The jokes are forced and juvenile and every scene is dragged out until it’s been stretched razor-thin. Portman’s SNL appearances have proven she’s got comedic chops; if she’s going to be utilized in a comedy, it should be a lot smarter than this.
The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)
• Available on Showtime
Portman stepped into the world of costumed period dramas with The Other Boleyn Girl. A fictionalized version of Mary Boleyn’s affair with her sister’s husband Henry VIII and the deadly fallout of this intrigue.
Despite some interesting material steeped in historical events as well as a cast including Scarlett Johansson and Eric Bana, the movie was a disappointment. The potential of the story is wasted on a steamy melodrama that feels more at home as a TV movie without the talents of these fine actors.
Lucy In The Sky (2019)
• Available on fuboTV
Given the performance Portman delivered as a troubled young woman with huge ambition, Lucy in the Sky felt like it was poised to be a perfect vehicle for her. Loosely based on a true story, the movie stars Portman as an astronaut who returns to Earth and struggles with her seemingly mundane life.
Sadly, the movie squanders an interesting story to go through the motions of a dull and predictable drama. The movie also ignores some of the more bizarre aspects of the true story that could have helped turn it into a more off-kilter tale that would have been more compelling.
Thor: The Dark World (2013)
• Available on Starz and Disney+
Portman’s surprise return to the MCU in Thor: Love and Thunder has been met with a lot of acclaim, with many calling it the best aspect of the movie. However, the character hasn’t always gotten her due in the MCU.
After being sidelined as generic love interest Jane Foster in 2011’s Thor, Natalie Portman got sidelined even more in 2013’s Thor: The Dark World. When Loki became a fan favorite after The Avengers, Portman’s role in The Dark World was reduced so much that she was little more than a benign presence in most of her scenes, leading Portman to quit the Marvel rat race.
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