Mary Badham
Was great in To Kill a Mockingbird. Bad downhill slide from there. By this movie she had already lost it. She never was an actrress, just a child pawn. Sad.
shareYeah, it's too bad. My guess is, nobody wanted to put any particular time or effort into training her as an actress because she wasn't going to be sellable as a gorgeous young thing, so she just got thrown into casts a few times without any development at all after Mockingbird and floundered quickly. I'd agree that's "sad" in a way, but on the other hand, if you were in Mockingbird and created that memorable character that literally generations of kids watch and relate to (one of our daughters even has that nickname occasionally, because of her always-into-everything reputation), maybe a one-off for all time isn't so bad. Most people don't get that much.
shareGo to her page here,and you'll see that it wasn't that no one wanted to work with her,but she already had the attitude that she was perfect and needed no training.
She claims to have been told she's a "natural actress" and that training would hurt her already perfected skills.
She's spent the last 40 years critiquing every actress on Earth,and none seem to impress her.
That is really interesting. I'll have to follow up on this.
If it's true, I guess it goes to show you that you can never tell 1) an actor's actual personality from his/her screen persona, or 2) that a curious, smart, sweet kid (if the child actor's persona was true to her actual self) is going to grow up into an adult who isn't self-focused or overly critical. If what you're saying is true, one of those two things didn't happen, and it's a shame.
Actually, I'm going to retract that previous message (posted an hour or so ago) and disagree with you here, if the evidence for what you're saying is limited to what's at her IMDB page. I don't think the quote you include here is sufficient to make that kind of judgment. Assuming the quote is accurate, there must be a much larger context for it that we don't know about; and besides, what she said was only that she was told she was a "natural" or "instinctive" actress and that she shouldn't take lessons. It is entirely possible that she was told that. It is also true that for some actors (and musicians, and athletes, et al.) it is possible to take a true "natural" and make difficult what was once easy, by overinstruction and overfocus on method or technique. (I worry about that already with Jennifer Lawrence, who -- aside from all the celebrity and buzz and hype -- is the best young actor I've seen in a very, very long time.)
I would also agree with her that too many (I don't know if I'd say "most," but I won't quibble) actors' performances on TV and in film are "self-conscious" and/or "overacted." Maybe it would've been more diplomatic for her not to say so, especially after being out of the game for so long, because it does, as you indicate, make her sound like somebody who's holding herself apart and issuing queenly edicts about quality of performance. But the substance of her statement, I think, happens to be at least mostly true.
On the other hand, maybe you have more evidence that she has spent the last 40 years critiquing every actor. I'm open to that. I just think that what's here doesn't necessarily support a conclusion that she cut herself out of the business because she was too conceited and too unwilling to "train."