Will the real Natalie Portman please stand up?

Tara
Well, there was a time when she had to share her particular showbiz slot with one Leelee Sobieski — both were bankable (then) jailbait who’d been the youngest things in pretentious, allegedly brainy fare and then went on to make dumb romantic comedies with people their own age. But then Sobieski unveiled her poetry to the world, thus stopping her career dead in its tracks and allowing Portman to peel off ahead of her. Still, to say Portman’s doing more impressive work than Leelee Sobieski is to damn her with the faintest possible praise, considering that I, too, am a better-known actress at this point than Helen Hunt’s Mini-Me is.

So I guess I just don’t know about Portman yet. I do know, however, that I wouldn’t want my teen years to be immortalized for the world to pore over and criticize, and I would hope that I was less annoying at 24 than I was at 14, as Portman seems to be. Given her kid-actor roots, she’s doing pretty well for herself: it’s hard to argue with an Oscar nomination. Let’s just hope she does more with hers, going forward, than Kate Hudson did. Continuing to steer well clear of Garry Marshall is probably a good idea.

Sarah
Not marrying a “rocker” nobody has cared about for a decade, whose scuzzy beard then swallows her “career,” is also probably a wise move — as is working with Milos Forman, which she’s doing in an upcoming movie about Goya. Artist bio-pics are a crapshoot, but nobody saw “Pollock” and Marcia Gay Harden netted an Oscar for that, so, based on her performance in “Closer” and the fact that she’s thus far avoided becoming a Corey in her personal life, I’m willing to see what Portman does post-Padmé before I decide on her one way or the other.

Unless of course she stars in a Nora Ephron film, in which case she’s dead to me permanently.

Tara
I think she’d die inside if she signed such a contract anyway.

Sarah
Well, that would answer a lot of questions about Meg Ryan.

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