Leelee Sobieski vs. Natalie Portman
Battle of the Bankable Jailbait

Heaven knows that in the climate of wacky, sex-obsessed filmic descendants of Porky's and pale imitations of Scream, there is no shortage of conventionally attractive, marginally talented performers to populate these cookie-cutter movie outints. What is more rare is that teenaged performer who is both genuinely talented, and genuinely a teenager, but given the kinds of roles most generally available for actors in this age bracket, the question becomes, how many such actors does Hollywood really require?

Fans of Natalie Portman, in defending her to detractors, are fond of citing her performance in The Professional as proof of her acting chops. And while someone could very well make an argument in favour of her performance as being very self-assured and natural for a thirteen-year-old girl, Portman is not thirteen anymore, and her turn as Queen Amidala in The Phantom Menace put any right-thinking person in mind of a particularly curvaceous and elegant piece of furniture -- an escritoire, for instance -- than of an actually regal young woman. Following that role up with bland Oprah's Book Club dross like Anywhere But Here and the upcoming Where the Heart Is does not bode well for her future. Come on, Natalie: Do you want to be a latter-day Audrey Hepburn -- as your fans seem to think you could be -- or the second coming of Ashley Judd?

Then there's Leelee Sobieski. Yes, she slummed it in Deep Impact and Never Been Kissed. But she also proved herself equal to the task of anchoring such smart and serious material as A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries and the TV mini-series Joan of Arc. Sobieski even turned up in the hugely anticipated Eyes Wide Shut, and whatever you might think of it, it can't have been a walk in the park for a (at the time) fifteen-year-old girl to take direction from Stanley Kubrick. Sobieski is now suffering the backlash of negative critical opinion for her latest effort, Here on Earth, but we still think she's ahead of the game.

The real issue is this: There is a time in a young actor's career where it's permissible to alternate prestige films with popcorn movies. However, there is a line such an actor crosses, when slumming becomes a career path unto itself. Leelee Sobieski now knows that she can't make any more movies with Chris Klein; Natalie Portman still needs to learn to stay away from alumni of The Faculty.

Advantage: Leelee Sobieski.