Yeah, but it's not like she hadn't been acting for ten years or so before she made it. Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor and Samuel Jackson had been acting for even longer and they all sucked in it.
And again, you mention EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU and I'd be hard-pressed to find a good performance in that god-awful film, not to mention the fact that she was incredibly young and working in a Woody Allen film where the likes of experienced actors that I find quite talented in other films like Julia Roberts, Josh Brolin, and
Also, anyone who saw Portman in THE SEAGULL knows just how limited of an actress she is. Perhaps she's a bad stage actress, I think she's great on film, BLACK SWAN is a film, Oscars are given for films. At no point did I say she deserves a Tony, neither do I think she'd make a good Nina (from THE SEAGULL, not BLACK SWAN). I'd be hard-pressed to find any actress who could have made BLACK SWAN work as well as it does, she's almost in every frame of the movie, and carries the film throughout, it's a truly impressive turn. Her acting during the scene where she turns into the swan is terrific, and her interactions with Barbara Hershey and the teacher are just amazing.
Re Hillary Swank, it's sad she has two Oscars. I thought Bening was brilliant (in a much less showy role) in AMERICAN BEAUTY and Kate Winslet gave a ridiculously amazing performance in ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (a gazillion times better than the overrated turn she gave in THE READER). Maybe I feel about Hillary Swank the way some of you seem to feel about Natalie Portman...Swank was also supposed to be quite terrible as another Anne (Sullivan) on stage.
"Some people can thrive and bloom living life in a living room, that's perfect for some people of one hundred and five. But I at least gotta try, when I think of all the sights that I gotta see, all the places I gotta play, all the things that I gotta be at"
