My own misgivings about Liv as Arwen were always based on the fact that she struck me, both in past performances and in the few interviews that I had seen with her, as a callow young girl. Arwen is nearly 3000 years old; you expect her to have commensurate presence, dignity, and wisdom. You want to have someone in the role who can project a little life wisdom and the feeling that she’s been around the block a time or two, you know? An actress that is a woman rather than a girl. <P>I’ll be the first to say that I thought she did an okay job in FotR, but on the other hand, scenes of Arwen crying into her pillow in TTT were exactly the sort of thing that I feared might happen. You can’t put the blame all on her, certainly – those scenes between Arwen and Elrond were poorly conceived, written, and executed in my opinion – but an actress with a bit more maturity might have fought those scenes or at least been able to bring them off more convincingly. Ingrid Bergman was 27 when she did <I>Casablanca</I>, only a few years older than Liv when she did LotR, but when she cries, she’s a <I>woman</I>. <P>To show I’m not just picking on Liv, I have similar problems with Elijah as Frodo.
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09-22-2003, 09:40 AM
Hybrid Mode
