Winona Ryder or Natalie Portman?

I think it's a case of perception through time with these 2.



For Portman, I think she might've excited people more than Ryder did when she first started out.  She really captivated people with her very first performance, in Leon.  Able to capture a sense of humanity which resonated strongly with Leon fans.  I think the appeal of Leon is largely the sadness of the ending, but still doesn't change the fact that people really liked her and the film at the time.

Then she had this reputation for being "a promising child star."  And did nothing to damage that until the early 00s.  In the early 00s was when the hatorade for Portman first came around.  They forgave her for Padme Amidala in the first film, but in the 2nd film her performance was just bad.  She was nothing special in the first, but the whole film was a disaster she hardly was singled out as particularly egregious.  But for Attack of the Clones, her acting was roasted for being some kind of laughable.   After that came 4 years of films that were heavily criticized in the early 00s.  While she earned a nomination for Closer - her performance was highly divisive and got a lot of criticism for phoniness and overly dramatic Portman wheelhouse tendencies.  Garden State disgusted lots of people, and V for Vendetta is certainly no great achievement for anybody involved.

Then I think you can argue Black Swan did change her career or at least gave her a fresh direction, but I think Jackie is the performance of her career to remember but obviously that doesn't appeal to the more common film fans that like Portman mostly for Garden State, Closer, and Leon - more middle brow stuff able to induce more fans.



For Ryder, again started out as a child star but thought of as very vanilla/soft/basic sensibilities.  1988-1992 was when we were first used to the stigma of Ryder being a soft pop culture icon, and I agree with Allenism... zeitgeist-y.   In Beetlejuice was when people first took notice of her, and they responded well to her presence - they liked her punk-y vibe.  In Heathers, she was also mostly liked - though not quite there as an actress - but still she had a sizeable enough fanbase, just wasn't approved by the film fans that view films very seriously.  I think that was where the perception mostly came from, it took a while for "serious" film fans to finally get with Ryder, and 5 years from 1988-1992 was a long enough time for her initial perception to persist.   Mostly thought of as fine in Edward Scissorhands, Mermaids, and Dracula but she was mostly associated with pop culture, girl with a pleasant face, but wasn't hyped up to be possibly the next best thing like Portman was after Leon.

It was The Age of Innocence that flipped the page for Ryder, and her perception started to change after that and Little Women (2 positively received Oscar nominations).  While divisive in The Crucible, I think her acting talent began to show at that point.  Girl, Interrupted being her last hurrah, but a highly successful film and yielded great notices for all 3 mini-cultural icons: Jolie, Ryder, and Murphy.  Followed by that famous shoplifting incident we're all aware of.



I prefer Ryder personally though.