Sienna Miller is a Pretty, Crappy Actress

ALL POSTS: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z etc

October 23rd, 2009

Sienna Miller is a Pretty, Crappy Actress

The opening night for Broadway’s After Miss Julie, starring Sienna Miller and ex-Mr. Angelina Jolie, Johnny Lee Miller, was last night and the reviews are good - about Sienna Miller’s looks. Via Daily Mail and People:

New York Times reviewer Ben Brantley, the most influential on Broadway, while confessing that he was initially ‘rooting’ for Ms Miller, wrote: ‘If Julie is written as clashing chords of conflicted impulses, Ms. Miller plays them like a novice at a piano, plunking down each note loudly and individually.’

But, ultimately, Brantley’s praise is limited to Miller’s “good diction, good posture and great legs. Commendable as these attributes are, they are of limited use in portraying a tautly wound, death-courting neurotic who is eaten alive by her own demons.”

Terry Teachout, theatre critic for the Wall Street Journal also stuck the knife in. He said: ‘A model turned second-tier movie star, all she does is stalk around the stage striking vampy poses… she has no more business playing a classic stage role than I have posing for the cover of Vogue.’

Slightly more approving is Michael Kuchwara, who for the Associated Press also notes that Miller “looks sensational: blonde hair done up in a quintessential 1940s ‘do, her trim figure wrapped in a pert floral print dress that shows off her great legs. The very model of a seducer awaiting to commence seduction … And there is a relentless quality to Sienna Miller’s performance, not terribly subtle or vulnerable, but compelling in its obsessiveness.”

It was good of all of these reviewers to state the obvious as their last resort when struggling to say something nice. I would have added something like, “Sienna looked surprisingly less trashy than normal giving her an almost saint-like quality.” Or “Sienna was almost unrecognizable without somebody else’s husband attached to her vagina.” Or “Sienna who?”