Is it just me or also an another person finds her performance absolutely terrible? I mean she sounds naive and stupid like a little girl. It pretty much ruins the movie, because she doesn't fit in there at all.
shareShe was married to the Director ;-) Nah I'm kidding, not sure I agree, I think that was the character she was meant to be playing. She's very good in Dressed to Kill another De Palma film and I thought she was great in the Robocop movies.
shareI knew there would be threads about this. She is deliberately playing the character in this baby doll, child-like way and it most definitely "fits" in the film. She has real heart in this film, especially when she admits to Travolta that she schemed to rip off the johns.
This is one sweet and rich performance. Most young actresses today couldn't even touch what she did.
I am free. But life is so cheap.
Thanks RTprod...its good some people see that the pin uppy baby doll naive girl is EXACTLY why she is acting so well....!!! And that makes the ending all the more tragic....
tempering extremities with extreme sweet
Sure, according to Allen in the interview on the new blu-ray, it was a conscious decision on her part to play the character that way. Fine. I still think it was too over the top, at least in some scenes.
shareI'm thinking the entire movie was made poorly deliberately.
shareNo adult woman is this drippy and childlike. Poor acting.
Allen should have been in nothing based on her merits.
She peaked at Carrie.
No adult woman is this drippy and childlike. Poor acting.
You don't get out much, do you? There are plenty of women who act like this character, immature and with a baby voice.
shareI do know a few "real life" women who don't act that far off from Sally's character. But, yeah, she does add an ironic innocence to to the role and Karen Allen had the look to pull it off. I'll always love that small bit when she asks Jack how he got into sound work and he replies "I don't know." They both break character for a second before he tells the real story.
shareI respectfully disagree. Without trying to give away the ending, my heart always breaks at the end and it is specifically because of the way she plays her character. Her and Travolta made a great duo.
shareI agree with the OP that NA's acting is really sub-par -- same in DP's Dressed to Kill -- but for some odd reason, I still find her quite watchable. Maybe because there is something essentially likable about her.
Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoilers!
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Nancy Allen has been far better in other films, so she's a competent actress. But her performance in 'Blow Out' was really weak, and a major distraction to me in enjoying the film. Whether or not the character was written to be that way, Ms. Allen just didn't pull it off.
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From the moment she opened her mouth for the first time at the hospital, there was a battle in the movie between good, which is pretty much everything else in the movie, and evil, which is her performance. When I saw at the end that John Lithgow finished the job, I was actually happy.
Simply Terrible. One of the most annoying, not believable, voices I ever heard.
It's not the real her. She's just playing the part that way. She acts much differently in Dressed To Kill and Carrie (the 1976 version).
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