Natalie Portman’s 20 best performances, ranked
From Léon The Professional to May December, we're taking a look at the many highlights from Natalie Portman's storied career
Film Lists Natalie Portman
Black Swan (Fox Searchlight), V For Vendetta (Warner Bros. Pictures), Jackie (Fox Searchlight), May December (Netflix) Graphic: The A.V. Club
From indie comedies to sci-fi box office juggernauts and seemingly every genre in between, Natalie Portman’s career is staggeringly expansive. With more than 30-plus years in the industry (and one Oscar and three Academy Award nominations under her belt), few actresses her age boast a resume anywhere near as decorated. Whether she’s playing historical heads of state, alien royalty, or a dystopian freedom fighter, Portman can be relied upon to deliver maximum emotional impact even in the smallest of roles, including resonant work when her career began at the tender age of 13. Portman’s latest film, May December, features one of her strongest performances yet—but where does it slot in alongside the rest of her impressive filmography?
48 Comments
She’s storied alright.
She’s fantastic, deserved her Oscar and elevates nearly anything she is in.That is an impossible lift for the creepy Beautiful Girls and the Star Wars prequels, the most disappointing films ever made.
I found her interesting in the SW prequels for maybe half of one movie. I’m sure she was directed to be wooden and formal in Phantom Menace but man was that a tough watch. Agree fully that those are the biggest letdowns of my filmgoing life.
Those movies make me angry…
The emotional differential between the score firing up and the resulting goosebumps on my arms, to walking out completely deflated and bewildered how the movie could be such a misfire on every level is probably the broadest range I’ve ever experienced – in any context. Just so, so disappointing.
I walked out of Ant Man: Quantumania earlier this year and immediately called my son. “How bad was it?” he asked. “Attack of the Clones bad” I replied.
Yeah, calling her Padme “iconic” is.. just not right.
Especially when compared to Princess Leia. Or, heck, even Rey is probably more iconic now.
I also would put her Nina from The Black Swan at the top but I’m a little disappointed looking at her filmography. I’ve always thought of her as fairly reliable and impossibly beautiful, but looking at this list, I’m also finding her work to be unremarkable. I just don’t see any movies here that has me going, “wow, she was really great in that.”
I regrettably had the same reaction, since I find she uniformly delivers in any role – it’s just that many of the surrounding movies aren’t that compelling.
I thought she was terrific in Beautiful Girls, back in the day. I don’t think that’s necessarily a movie to leave out on the coffee table, so to speak, but that should have come off as unbearably creepy and didn’t, somehow. And I think it was her performance that really made it work.
Sounds like you need to watch Leon a few more times.
yeah, still hard to get past the creep-i-fying nature of it.
There isn’t really anything creepy about it. Natalie Portmans character has a few moments where she attempts to turn an innocent situation into something else…but Leon shuts it down as he is also a just a child. The american audience is really the only audience that saw it as something else.
The movie certainly plays with the dynamic, but its clear throughout that Leon is repulsed by her interest and sees her as more of an adopted daughter. The reputation of the movie is more because of American squeamishness then anything that is actually in the film.
Nina from The Black Swan though is imo one of the better performances of that decade in film. I feel she’s her best when her character has an edge, Annihilation as well I think really suits her.
Closer would be number one for me, one of my favorite movies ever, and mostly because of her, she’s just amazing in it.
I feel like she kinda falls into the Jennifer Lawrence trap, where she’s a great actress, really pretty, and being that she’s a movie star, she’s interested in lead roles where she’s the only/biggest person on the poster, and so she ends up making a lot of mediocre and middling films. If she were less successful, she’d probably have a better filmography, lots of good roles in ensembles and such, but she’s an Oscar-winning movie star, so she’s off starring in movies like Planetarium, Lucy in the Sky, Jane Got a Gun, and A Tale of Love and Darkness.
“Lauren In Heat” sounds kinda hot.
“Help control the Portman population: have your Portmans spayed or neutered.”
What I’ve learned from this list is that I’ve seen very few Natalie Portman movies. I’ve seen exactly two of these movies, which is surprising.
Any list of Portman’s best work that doesn’t include foulmouthed rapping on SNL is woefully incomplete.
They also ignore her great work on Between Two Ferns
Please, the real MVP there was Wizz the dog.
“…with enemies hot on his tale.”
“…with enemies hot on his tale.” It’s an old expression – like when the bad guys really like your stories.
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She is great in most movies…. most movies that aren’t Star Wars or Thor! In both those series she had no chemstry with her love interest. I laughed at how bad both her and Hayden were in Episode 2.
but Alex Garland’s 2018 film Annihilation ascends typical genre conventionsI believe you mean that it transcends said conventions…
Schoolgirl scene in V for Vendetta. Best work she’s ever done.
I guess it’s not fair to expect 2023 AVC writers to be familiar with all the content that came before them, but this site’s own Nathan Rabin introduced Manic Pixie Dream Girl to describe Kirsten Dunst’s character in his My Year of Flops review of Elizabethtown. Garden State someone deconstructed that archetype by revealing that much of Portman’s quirky and unpredictable behavior was due to low-grade mental illness (a concept taken even further by Arrested Development).
“Mr. F.”
Dammit, you got here first.
I’d move Closer further up the list. She doesn’t turn to sex work because she’s devastated over being dumped by Law. She’s scheming and manipulative, and finds a weak excuse to break up with him when she feels they’re getting too close. The ending is her establishing herself back in New York exactly the same way she had in London, glammed up and walking down the street looking for the next target. A complex character all around.
Hmm, I may have to rewatch that. I don’t know if the dialogue was supposed to be sexy or progressive, but I can only imagine how many takes some of the scenes took so that the actors could get away with a straight face.There’s not much of a plot to speak of. Just four people acting in ridiculous ways, saying ridiculous lines.
Can we please reassess the reassessment of the prequels? They may have isolated good points but are not good movies and never were. It doesn’t matter what else has come out to which we can favorably compare them. I say this as someone who oddly enjoys them. Natalie Portman is a greatest-in-generation level actor and those movies did her performance the fuck in and damaged her career, thankfully not fatally. Stop giving credit where credit is not deserved.
Pretty good list. Move V and Closer higher. Annihilation much lower. Surprised I have seen most of these. She makes pretty good choices.
TWENTY best performances? Isn’t that over the top?
She should have won her second Oscar for Jackie. I love Emma Stone, but La La Land is dreck and other than that one scene at the very end she doesn’t stand out compared to Portman or any of the other nominees that year.
La La Land is fantastic. Its a musical for people who hate musicals.
I really like La La Land. Stone’s performance was good, but I can’t imagine it having been too challenging from a nuanced-acting perspective; her natural charisma was the key. But I kinda hated Portman’s Jackie, and would have been bummed had she won. Amy Adams should have gotten it for Arrival.
When you right you right. And you right.
I must be the only one who liked Lucy in The Sky. She’s low-key one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood. And, like Jodie Foster, survived childhood acting in the industry to become a well-adjusted adult.
Possibly the most overrated actress of our time.
Nah, CLOSER needs to be at the top. Everyone in that film was on point and she still burned the house down.
She’s a bit over rated.
Portman is technically a great actress but for me she has always had a problem blending into any role she takes. As an adult, she is just too beautiful (and in a privileged and untouchable sort of way) to be believable as anything other than a socialite, ballerina, or actress in a meta sort of way. That of course explains her best roles.
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