14-year old Natalie Portman looks like 26-year old Portman?

[septimus]

I'd never even heard of Natalie Portman until recently but a few weeks ago my wife and I watched The Other Boleyn Girl (with 26-year old Portman playing Anne Boleyn). Yesterday we watched Beautiful Girls (with 14-year old Portman playing the leading man's "Lolita" interest).

This is almost our only exposure to Natalie Portman (though I see at Wikipedia she had a minor role in Cold Mountain which my wife and I watched many years ago.) My wife is not a movie buff, pays no attention to actors/actresses names, and, in any event, Portman gets only a smallish credit in Beautiful Girls.

Yet my wife recognized Portman immediately from a scene that didn't even have a close-up! (And we don't have hi-def TV.) It was the distinctive smile that gave it away. She's done similar feats before, often forgetting which other movie she's seen the performer in, but in this case knew right away it was The Other Boleyn Girl.

I was flabbergasted. I looked up Portman at Google Images where, due to camera angle or hair styles or whatever, I'd not have known that some of the adult pictures were of the same person. (One reason for my flabbergast is that I'm just the opposite: I used to confuse Bruce Willis and Mickey Rourke. )

(If I stare at the pictures of Portman at 14 years and some of the current pictures I can see she obviously has the same face, but am still amazed my wife caught it at a glance, with the "comparison photo" a weeks-old memory.)

Was this amazing? (My wife has many even more amazing talents, but that would be a subject for other threads. )

[Snarky_Kong]

Was it amazing that your wife recognized a person? No.

[carlotta]

I think facial recognition is a talent that people have to varying degrees. I also think it's not surprising to recognize the same person at different ages. I also think Natalie Portman had a mature face at a young age....or a mature soul...or something...she was a disturbingly mature child actress, perfect for a Lolita type role.

There was a sweet little movie called Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dance and Charm School. I immediately pegged an adult actor in a bit part as the father of a child actor with a much larger role. My husband said, "really? You're sure they're father and son?" and I said," either they're father and son or the director had the foresight to film the scenes with the child actor 20 years ago with the same actor as a child!"


and suddenly it came crashing in on me with perfect clarity that that is exactly what had happened. The director had incorporated a short he had made much earlier in his career into an expanded version of the same story as a feature film.

The DVD extras bore me out! The actor is Elden Henson.

[Equipoise]

Originally Posted by septimus

Yesterday we watched Beautiful Girls (with 14-year old Portman playing the leading man's "Lolita" interest).

I must protest. There was nothing "Lolita"ish about Natalie's character in Beautiful Girls. Marty (Portman) has a crush on Willie (Timothy Hutton) and he's fascinated by her maturity and intelligence, but they both know there's no possibility that they'll become a couple, at least not for many, many years, and by then they each would have gone their separate ways. Absolutely nothing sexual happens between them. One of Willie's idiot friends calls her a "Neighborhood Lotlita" but she has a perfect comeback:

Paul: So you're the little neighborhood Lolita.
Marty: So you're the alcoholic high school buddy shit for brains.

[GuanoLad]

When Natalie Portman was cast in the Star Wars prequels at age 17, she was partly chosen because she had the kind of look that could play younger and older. Over a seven year period of shooting the trilogy (from 1997 to 2003), she had to play ~14 through to ~26.

[boytyperanma]

I'm much more impressed you didn't know who Natalie Portman was than your wives ability to recognize her.

[Equipoise]

Not that everybody pays attention to the Oscars, but her nomination and win for Best Actress a couple of years ago got her a lot of publicity on TV and magazines.

[Alessan]

Originally Posted by boytyperanma

I'm much more impressed you didn't know who Natalie Portman was than your wives ability to recognize her.

Yeah. I mean, like her or not, she's been one of the world's most famous actresses for the past decade.

Has the OP heard of George Clooney? Johnny Depp? Brad Pitt?

[L.mo5rg]

Wow, I am definitely amazed that you hadn't heard of her before, but not that your wife managed to recognise a person.

V for Vendetta? star wars I - III? Thor? Black swan?

[Equipoise]

I can see someone not being into Star Wars, comic book movies or art house movies.

Edit to add, I've known about her since Leon: The Professional, but I can see how others would have not seen most of her movies.

I don't even remember her being in Cold Mountain.

[Icarus]

Originally Posted by Equipoise

I don't even remember her being in Cold Mountain.

Lady in a cabin, Jude Law protects her from marauders.

[Snickers]

Yeah, she's the one with the baby that the marauders want to leave out exposed in the cold. Her husband was killed in the war.

[Quartz]

Originally Posted by Equipoise

I must protest. There was nothing "Lolita"ish about Natalie's character in Beautiful Girls. Marty (Portman) has a crush on Willie (Timothy Hutton) and he's fascinated by her maturity and intelligence, but they both know there's no possibility that they'll become a couple, at least not for many, many years, and by then they each would have gone their separate ways.

It was about that age that Princess (now Queen) Elizabeth became enamoured of Philip Mountbatten.

[The wind of my soul]

Originally Posted by boytyperanma

I'm much more impressed you didn't know who Natalie Portman was than your wives ability to recognize her.

Yeah I read that line and immediately thought "zombie." Definitely wasn't expecting the date on that to be yesterday.

[BigT]

No, she looks pretty much the same, only with wrinkles and other "older" features. In fact, I thought this was going to be another one of those threads where people claimed she looked identical to her current self as a kid. (and they never do, BTW. For example, Dick Clark was not anywhere near ageless--he looked every bit as old as he was. James Lipton, no the other hand...)-

[Hail Ants]

I think the major reason is because Portman has always been an extremely good actor and, in my opinion, strikingly beautiful. Here she is at 13 auditioning for The Professional. Schwing!

[ScarletNumber]

Originally Posted by Equipoise

I must protest. There was nothing "Lolita"ish about Natalie's character in Beautiful Girls. Marty (Portman) has a crush on Willie (Timothy Hutton) and he's fascinated by her maturity and intelligence, but they both know there's no possibility that they'll become a couple, at least not for many, many years, and by then they each would have gone their separate ways. Absolutely nothing sexual happens between them. One of Willie's idiot friends calls her a "Neighborhood Lotlita" but she has a perfect comeback:

I just figured that he didn't want to cheat on Jeannine Pratt.

[Mijin]

Originally Posted by GuanoLad

When Natalie Portman was cast in the Star Wars prequels at age 17, she was partly chosen because she had the kind of look that could play younger and older. Over a seven year period of shooting the trilogy (from 1997 to 2003), she had to play ~14 through to ~26.

It didn't work though. Maybe it's the outfits but she looks at least 10 years older than Anakin in PM, so it's kinda weird to see them hook up in the next film.

(yeah I know: how dare you diss phantom menace!)

[iamthewalrus(:3=]

Originally Posted by Equipoise

There was nothing "Lolita"ish about Natalie's character in Beautiful Girls. Marty (Portman) has a crush on Willie (Timothy Hutton) and he's fascinated by her maturity and intelligence, but they both know there's no possibility that they'll become a couple, at least not for many, many years.

He's more than fascinated. He's really into her. Yes, it's tempered by the fact that it's clearly wrong and she's way too young, and he knows all those things, but he's quite smitten just the same.

[Happy Lendervedder]

Originally Posted by Hail Ants

I think the major reason is because Portman has always been an extremely good actor and, in my opinion, strikingly beautiful. Here she is at 13 auditioning for The Professional. Schwing!

Did you really just schwing a 13-year-old?

[terentii]

My God! She looks just like my daughter (now 17) in that clip! I swear, they could be near-identical twin sisters.

[Arabella Flynn]

Originally Posted by septimus

Yet my wife recognized Portman immediately from a scene that didn't even have a close-up!

You're conflating two skills here, in which it is perfectly possible to have wildly differing amounts of both trained competence and natural talent. You were trying to recognize a face you're not familiar with in still photos taken many years apart. Quite doable, but some people are better at it than others. It's similar to recognizing shared traits among the members of a family.

Your wife recognized someone from a low-def rendering of characteristic movements. Specific motions are often enough to ID someone, even if you can't see their facial features very well. I have a friend whose eyesight is so appalling that when she was a little kid she thought trees really did look like the puffy things in coloring books; prior to glasses, she learned to recognize people at quite some distance by the way the colorful person-botch walked and stood.

There's a neurological condition called prosopagnosia, in which the hard-wired 'face recognition' features of your brain fail to group features together into a coherent face and file it with the right kind of memories; depending on the degree, prosopagnostics might fail to recognize even family members. It's especially miserable with actors, who change makeup, hair color, and (if they're any good) body language for different roles. Oliver Sacks, the fellow behind Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, has written about it from time to time -- he's fairly badly prosopagnostic, and also so absent-minded he's been known to walk straight past his own apartment building on his way home, more than once.

Personally, there are a lot of people that I find more distinctive for their movements than anything else. I've been poking into very old films lately. Charlie Chaplin is almost unrecognizable out of makeup in still photographs, but I couldn't possibly miss him on film, even if he's been stuffed into a giant chicken suit.

[thirdname]

Originally Posted by Hail Ants

I think the major reason is because Portman has always been an extremely good actor and, in my opinion, strikingly beautiful. Here she is at 13 auditioning for The Professional. Schwing!

The movie was released when she was 13, so she's probably more like 11 there.

[Hail Ants]

Originally Posted by Happy Lendervedder

Did you really just schwing a 13-year-old?

I didn't mean it to just sound pervy, I meant it as in if you didn't know any better she could pass for 16 or 17 in that clip. She was a classic beauty at a disconcertingly young age!

[Enuma Elish]

I'm 49 years old and all I think of when I see Natalie Portmann (at any age) is: how many crayons does she need to color with? 8, 16, 32, or the whole 64?

[Covered_In_Bees!]

What does that even mean?

Is that some overly complicated and unfunny way of saying she looks like a child?

[Justin_Bailey]

Originally Posted by Covered_In_Bees!

Is that some overly complicated and unfunny way of saying she looks like a child?

I'm guessing yes.

[Darth Panda]

Originally Posted by Enuma Elish

I'm 49 years old and all I think of when I see Natalie Portmann (at any age) is: how many crayons does she need to color with? 8, 16, 32, or the whole 64?

She has a degree from Harvard, is multi-lingual, has co-authored some decent papers, and even has Erdos number, fwiw. She also taught a course at Columbia as a guest lecturer.

[bup]

But she looks young.

[Irishman]

Originally Posted by Hail Ants

I didn't mean it to just sound pervy, I meant it as in if you didn't know any better she could pass for 16 or 17 in that clip. She was a classic beauty at a disconcertingly young age!

"Schwing" isn't quite the right word, but she is definitely an elegant beauty, and has a lot of charm. When she smiles in that clip, her whole face lights up, and that's engaging. She really captured the role in the film, too.

Originally Posted by bup

But she looks young.

Besides being short and skinny and small chested?

[bup]

Originally Posted by Irishman

Besides being short and skinny and small chested?

I never really analyzed it. I didn't realize she's short. She just looks - I don't know - doe-eyed, maybe? Big look of innocence or something.

Definitely not the boobs. Her figure is, of course, a standard upon which beauty might be measured.

[Irishman]

She's 5'3" (1.6 m). She's 31 years old, so she's still reasonably young.

Scanning imdb, here she is in Feb of this year.
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2374415872/nm0000204

And here she is at the Golden Globes this year.
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1628418048/nm0000204

So the question I guess is to Enuma Elish.

[septimus]

Originally Posted by Arabella Flynn

You're conflating two skills here, in which it is perfectly possible to have wildly differing amounts of both trained competence and natural talent....

Your wife recognized someone from a low-def rendering of characteristic movements. Specific motions are often enough to ID someone, even if you can't see their facial features very well. I have a friend whose eyesight is so appalling that when she was a little kid she thought trees really did look like the puffy things in coloring books; prior to glasses, she learned to recognize people at quite some distance by the way the colorful person-botch walked and stood.

There's a neurological condition called prosopagnosia, in which the hard-wired 'face recognition' features of your brain fail to group features together into a coherent face and file it with the right kind of memories; depending on the degree, prosopagnostics might fail to recognize even family members. It's especially miserable with actors, who change makeup, hair color, and (if they're any good) body language for different roles. Oliver Sacks, the fellow behind Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, has written about it from time to time -- he's fairly badly prosopagnostic, and also so absent-minded he's been known to walk straight past his own apartment building on his way home, more than once.

Personally, there are a lot of people that I find more distinctive for their movements than anything else. I've been poking into very old films lately. Charlie Chaplin is almost unrecognizable out of makeup in still photographs, but I couldn't possibly miss him on film, even if he's been stuffed into a giant chicken suit.

Very interesting comments, Arabella Flynn. And might help explain why I used to conflate Bruce Willis and Mickey Rourke: do they have similar demeanors?

Perhaps I'll be called sexist but, despite the Willis-Rourke example, I usually identify males more easily than females. I often have trouble recognizing Nicole Kidman whose looks seem to vary greatly between films.

[obfusciatrist]

In the picture that produced the "schwing" she looks about 12 to me. A twelve year old dolled up a bit, but 12. She does not look 12 to me any more, but she is one of those people who didn't change a lot in appearance while growing up.

[Arabella Flynn]

Originally Posted by septimus

Very interesting comments, Arabella Flynn. And might help explain why I used to conflate Bruce Willis and Mickey Rourke: do they have similar demeanors?

Perhaps I'll be called sexist but, despite the Willis-Rourke example, I usually identify males more easily than females. I often have trouble recognizing Nicole Kidman whose looks seem to vary greatly between films.

I couldn't say about Willis and Rourke; I can picture the first, but I don't think I've seen enough of the second to compare. I can go look it up if you like. My blog is full of flotsam, but a lot of said flotsam has to do with psych profiling, a large part of which involves using "analyzing body language" as an excuse to go scour YouTube for endless footage of interesting people. I could give you a lot more examples of actors and actresses I have totally failed to recognize in something, because they're so ridiculously good at changing the way they move from role to role.

It may be that you recognize men more readily than women because you happen to focus on things it's easier to alter with makeup and costuming. It's easier for women to change their apparent demeanor without having to change how they stand or move just because they have more options for clothes, hair, and makeup. Good actresses do both. For example, I would never have known it was Charlize Theron as Aileen Wuornos in "Monster" had I not seen her name on the credits -- it's a bit difficult to reconcile with, say, "Aeon Flux".

The actors I find easiest to recognize are the ones that borrow heavily from their own native mannerisms as appropriate when they play various roles. Robert Downey Jr, David Tennant, Winona Ryder, Sigourney Weaver, and Angelina Jolie are some current names that spring to mind. Natalie Portman has had the same slightly wonky smile since she was a child, which makes her obvious. Nicole Kidman, from what I've seen, doesn't really have a lot of distinctive gestures or even move much when she talks; I can see where she'd be difficult to pick out with different hair/wardrobe/accents.

[Alessan]

Originally Posted by Darth Panda

She has a degree from Harvard, is multi-lingual, has co-authored some decent papers, and even has Erdos number, fwiw. She also taught a course at Columbia as a guest lecturer.

An Erdos-Bacon number, to be precise.

[Yookeroo]

Originally Posted by septimus

Very interesting comments, Arabella Flynn. And might help explain why I used to conflate Bruce Willis and Mickey Rourke: do they have similar demeanors?

How about Bruce Willis and Moby and Michael Stipe?

[elfkin477]

Eh. I'm more impressed that I asked co-viewers of Underworld Awakening if they thought this actress looked like this one back when she was in this...and it turned out that she looked like her to me because that's her mom

[Kozmik]

Originally Posted by bup

I never really analyzed it. I didn't realize she's short. She just looks - I don't know - doe-eyed, maybe? Big look of innocence or something.

Definitely not the boobs. Her figure is, of course, a standard upon which beauty might be measured.

Well, she did study and perform ballet and was a leading role in The Black Swan.

[Bryan Ekers]

Originally Posted by Kozmik

Well, she did study and perform ballet and was a leading role in The Black Swan.

Saw that recently. Didn't like it. It falls squarely into a genre I like to call "A human head!" stories.

SPOILER:

I first began categorizing A human head! stories in the late 1980s, when watching a TV series called Freddy's Nightmares, a horror anthology series based (loosely) on the Nightmare on Elm Street series. In a typical episode, a teenager would be walking along, minding his own business, when suddenly a van full of chainsaws would crash into him, it's buzzing slicing cargo flying about madly, dicing flesh and bone in a heady red mist of atomized blood as he screams in terror... and then the kid would wake up. "Wow, what a crazy dream!" Get dressed, go downstairs, find his mom in the kitchen. "Good morning, Mom. What's for breakfast?" "Good morning, son. Just the usual eggs, bacon, toast... and a human head!" The mother would pull a severed human head from the fridge, its eyes flaming red, tongue flapping, gore dripping from severed neck, the teenager screams in terror.... and then he wakes up again in his bed. Rinse, repeat, five or six more times and the last "nightmare" is only "real" because the episode is over.

The main character in Black Swan has a whole series of gory experiences, all being shaken off as dreams or hallucinations until the end. It got to the stage where there was no point getting emotionally invested in (or even particularly shocked by) what was happening, because five minutes later, it could be demonstrated to not actually have happened.

[Mister Rik]

Originally Posted by Arabella Flynn

You're conflating two skills here, in which it is perfectly possible to have wildly differing amounts of both trained competence and natural talent. You were trying to recognize a face you're not familiar with in still photos taken many years apart. Quite doable, but some people are better at it than others. It's similar to recognizing shared traits among the members of a family.

Your wife recognized someone from a low-def rendering of characteristic movements. Specific motions are often enough to ID someone, even if you can't see their facial features very well. I have a friend whose eyesight is so appalling that when she was a little kid she thought trees really did look like the puffy things in coloring books; prior to glasses, she learned to recognize people at quite some distance by the way the colorful person-botch walked and stood.

I experienced this not long ago. There's a young woman at work I like (I'd be all over her — figuratively speaking — if not for the fact that she's half my age) who has been there for 4-5 years. I'll call her "J". A couple years ago, another young woman, whom I'll call "A", was hired. After "A" had been working for a couple weeks, I finally had to ask her, "Are you J's sister?" And indeed she was. The thing is, the two of them look nothing alike. Different figures, totally different facial features, very different hair. The thing that clued me in was that "A" moved just like "J".

[JustinC]

I honestly didn't realize NP was in Leon. I've seen Leon several times but never looked at what the young girl did next.

[Bozuit]

I'm absolutely awful at recognizing faces. It's not uncommon for to recognize an actor from their voice before their face. But Natalie Portman is one of the few that I'll easily recognize in anything, even as a 14 year old.

[Arabella Flynn]

Originally Posted by septimus

Very interesting comments, Arabella Flynn. And might help explain why I used to conflate Bruce Willis and Mickey Rourke: do they have similar demeanors?

Went and had a look -- possibly, if you're dealing with photos that only really show the eyes? They do have the same sort of general big-guy ultra-casual way of shrugging and waving their hands around, but otherwise I'm not seeing it. For one thing, Rourke has hair. Did Bruce Willis ever have hair? I'm thirty and I think I've been watching him on-screen all my life, I don't ever remember any.

Having seen some clips of Rourke on Inside the Actor's Studio, with the sunglasses on, I'd have to say that in still photos I'd be more likely to wonder when Bono put on so much weight.

Originally Posted by Yookeroo

How about Bruce Willis and Moby and Michael Stipe?

None of them move even remotely alike. I can do a better breakdown than that, but I think it would be a bit much for a message board post. I picked apart seventeen seconds of the Avengers movie once and it took about three typed pages. If y'all are amused by this, I can start a dedicated thread.

[terentii]

Originally Posted by Arabella Flynn

Did Bruce Willis ever have hair? I'm thirty and I think I've been watching him on-screen all my life, I don't ever remember any.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SylyE...3CC71B46A1EF26

Both Rourke and Willis have that "smoker look," especially after about 1990. It's like you can actually see the tar and nicotine poisoning their bodies.

[GuanoLad]

Originally Posted by Arabella Flynn

Did Bruce Willis ever have hair?

Does a bird bee? Does a bee bird?

[TBG]

Originally Posted by Yookeroo

How about Bruce Willis and Moby and Michael Stipe?

Try again with Moby, Jim Rash, and JP Manoux.

[Elendil's Heir]

This earlier thread of Skald's - than whom there is no greater fan of Natalie Portman on the Dope - may be of interest: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/...d.php?t=611801