Andie MacDowell in Four Weddings and a Funeral

Well isn't that something! I've never heard of Andie being a bad actress. But you sure do have a point, OP!

Goddamn you for bringing this up.

ive always wanted to ask Peter Weir what he found so special about her. one of the greatest filmmakers of all time makes a rom com with one of the great actors of his generation (Depardieu) and casts Andie McDowell as the lead.

I thought she got much better as the film went on. Her character is a bit odd. I didn't get why she marries the older man and yet still tempts Hugh. She is beautiful enough to make his obsession same real. Hugh looked so good they needed someone as beautiful as him.

Can you believe they considered horse faced actress SJP for the role? She often talks about how she blew her audition.

There are plenty of horrible performance by no-name, one-hit wonder actresses. IMO, MacDowell is the absolute worst actress that ever achieved some success in her career. She was in some Hallmark TV series a few years ago and I remember seeing her in ads for it as I was channel surfing. She was even able to show how awful she was in a 5 second clip. I'll never understand how she became successful.

Spring 1986 Gap model, Andie MacDowell?

She could sure shake her ass in Beauty Shop

Models turned actresses seem to do ok even if they have no talent. Sometimes their background is an asset. Kim Novak basically played herself in "Picnic" and had the awkwardness of a young woman who knew what she didn't want more than what she wanted. A truly inept actress would have screwed-up the part. As for MacDowell---she seems to have looped/dubbed her dialogue in the early scenes. No chemistry and you wondered if she'd flubbed her lines. Blame the writers (or may be the editors) for not explaining why she hooked-up with that old stiff.

Love that film and I’m clueless why she gets called out as being a terrible actress. Certainly not great, but when cast carefully (as she was here) and in a good film (like this one) it works.

The reason she sounds odd OP is the writing is "British" and she's too "American". Laura Linney in Love Actually had the same problem.

Is it raining? I hadn't noticed

There are two problems with the character - it’s a fantasy American woman written by a British guy, which makes the character feel kind of off to Americans, and (most importantly) Andie just could not act, AT ALL, at that time. The infamous line reading in the rain at the end is the most glaring example of the latter. But those issues make the character into a cipher. The film works in spite of that because of Hugh Grant’s charm.

If you had a choice between Andie McDowell and Elizabeth McGovern, you'd go for McGovern.

Demi Moore would have been better than McDowell. Did she ask for too much money?

I think Demi Moore was looking for starring vehicles at this time. Grant is clearly the lead. Marisa Tomei turned down the part and regretted it. Her "people" felt she should be doing lead roles and not second leads like this is. Problem was this film was a huge hit and Tomei's films all bombed.

Elizabeth McGovern was over by the time this film was made.

Andie did get awards for sex, lies and videotape so I guess that is how she got the subsequent roles.

Surprising her career didn't die with Greystoke.

Glenn Close was called in to dub the whole performance!

REALLY!? Wow all this is news to me. Here's one for you. Someone told me that Lucile Ball in Mame was filmed with vaseline on the camera lens. Did you ever hear of such a thing? VASELINE??!

Andie McDowall is one of these actresses who has to have a strong Actors' Director. I thought she was lousy in 4 Weddings, Greystoke, a few other things......But she was wonderful in Robert Altman's Short Cuts, Sex Lies and Videotape, as well as very charming in Green Card and Groundhog Day.

She's also pretty good in the Netflix series Maid. I wouldn't be surprised if she gets her first Emmy Nomination.

Loved her

Tomei would have brought a lot more personality yo the role, but maybe that is part of why wooden Andie works here. She is just a cipher for Grant and the audience to project onto. Same with Groundhog Day.

All I can say is that this is one of the two movies that spring to mind where I didn’t want the lead to end up with the main love interest. It ruined the movie for me.

Even though this movie is crap & it's true - Hugh carries the movie - I thought the theme of loneliness & all the singletons thinking that marriage means the end of loneliness, when in fact it's just a different kind of loneliness still seems very timely

Moore was a little past that kind of role by then but could have done it well. She probably could have done the southern belle bullshit. Tomei would have needed a somewhat different character and more explanation of how she wound up with that old stiff.

They never really delved into her character's motivations at all or her relationship with the old stiff. Cipher indeed.

It’s funny watching Richard Curtis movies for his weird obsession with “exotic” American women, especially since he has never written one that rings true.

Does Andy McDowell’s character Carrie even have a coherent personality besides “cooly beautiful” and has slept with 30 something people (which is hard to imagine was a particularly shocking number for a thirty year old woman even in the early nineties)?

She’s certainly effective as the film’s object of desire!

Speaking of his "exotic" American women, I never could figure out why Harriet from Milwaukee in Love Actually had a Southern accent.

You dit-ent have to be mean, OP. You dit-ent!

[quote]It’s funny watching Richard Curtis movies for his weird obsession with “exotic” American women, especially since he has never written one that rings true.

From watching his movies over the years, I think Curtis had one specialty: writing stories about (somewhat) posh British eccentrics. He's originally from New Zealand, but it's like he doesn't know anyone outside of Chelsea, so I guess in that rarified little world, an American is sort of an exotic creature.

I thought she was perfect, a dream girl. Then again I liked Ali MacGraw in Love Story.

I guess she marries the older man because she thinks Hugh is the kind of guy who will never commit. (He says that at the first wedding in his best man speech and she looks down like she's disappointed.)

It is a bit inconsistent though when he spends the rest of the movie seemingly desperate to be with her yet she seems to rebuff him.

Supposedly the original casting for the role was Jeanne Tripplehorn, who would have been perfect. I could see Sela Ward pulling it off too. You need someone more charming and flaky-seeming to explain why the character is jumping from guy to guy and can’t really make up her mind.

What’s the other one, R20?