If you saw the movie “The September Issue” about Vogue Magazine, you know actress Sienna Miller is a favorite cover model of editor Anna Wintour. Miller even attended the premier of the movie in New York – even after filmmaker R.J. Cutler left moments of Vogue art directors re-imaging her neck and hair in the movie. Clearly, Sienna didn’t have artistic approval there.
Now she’s taken a much bigger step: she’s stepped into the shoes of many a great actress to take on the starring role of Patrick Marber’s “After Miss Julie” (taking off from Strinberg’s 1888 original “Miss Julie”), starring opposite actor Jonny Lee Miller (Angelina Jolie’s ex husband), and wearing amazing looks reminiscent the 1940’s and bright red lipstick. Yes, she looks amazing in the costumes – but the critical love ends there. The Wall Street Journal wrote, “As for Ms Miller, a model turned second-tier movie star, all she does is stalk around the stage striking vampy poses and looking really, really skinny. I almost felt sorry for her, but the truth is that she has no more business playing a classic stage role than I have posing for the cover of Vogue. The Roundabout Theatre Company should be ashamed of itself for asking her to do so.”
Ben Brantley in the New York Times said he had been “rooting” for Miller and gave her “points for courage”, but said: “If Julie is written as clashing chords of conflicted impulses, Ms Miller plays them like a novice at a piano, plunking down each note loudly and individually… when events take a turn for the lurid, the audience is laughing when it should be recoiling.”
Entertainment Weekly said the chemistry between the two leads was “surprisingly stagnant”, while Joe Dziemanowicz of the New York Daily News called Miller “improbably beautiful” – but did not apply that adjective to her acting ability.
Variety concluded that “Sienna Miller is out of her depth in the title role, making her dance of power and death an unaffecting tragedy”. In an interview before her debut, Miller said she was “scared, obviously, but really excited. If you want to be an actress you think about opening on Broadway.” She may have to start thinking again – or she may wind up only in sequels to “G I Joe.”
Tags: Jonny Lee Miller, Miss Julie, Sienna Miller
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