Natalie Portman Says Mike Nichols Saved Her Career After 'Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace'

Let's say you're an actress who has just landed one of the key roles in a new "Star Wars" trilogy. Before that, you had turned some heads as a kid in "Leon: The Professional," and had small appearances in films by directors like Michael Mann ("Heat") and Woody Allen ("Everyone Says I Love You"). But "Star Wars" was your key to the big time, and the future looked bright. But that's not quite how it turned out for Natalie Portman. And she reveals that the late, great Mike Nichols was the one who saved her career from a possibly skidding off the rails before the entire trilogy had hit theaters (Portman later starred in his 2004 effort "Closer"). 

" 'Star Wars' had come out around the time of [her performance in 'The Seagull' in Central Park], and everyone thought I was a horrible actress. I was in the biggest-grossing movie of the decade, and no director wanted to work with me," the actress recently told New...