Despite being some of the highest grossing films in history, the Star Wars prequels, beginning with The Phantom Menace and ending with Revenge of the Sith, were hated by many critics and fans alike.

Bad acting, horrible writing and needless CGI plagued the film trilogy. The actors and actresses starring in the film, like Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman, no doubt believed appearing in Star Wars would be a no-brainer for their career, catapulting them to stardom.

But that wasn't to be. In Portman's case, it actually hurt her career. Talking with New York Magazine in an article honoring late director Mike Nichols, Portman says her post-Star Wars acting career might not have happened if not for the help of Nichols.

"Star Wars had come out around the time of Seagull, and everyone thought I was a horrible actress," Portman says. "I was in the biggest-grossing movie of the decade, and no director wanted to work with me. Mike wrote a letter to Anthony Minghella and said, 'Put her in Cold Mountain, I vouch for her.' And then Anthony passed me on to Tom Tykwer, who passed me on to the Wachowskis. I worked with Milos Forman a few years later. He said, 'Mike saved me. He wrote a letter so that I could get asylum in the U.S.' He did that for 50 people, and it doesn't make any one of us feel less special."

Let's be honest -- if this was the only scene you had to go by to judge Portman's acting chops, what would you think?

A few years later, Portman would prove it wasn't her acting that dragged the Star Wars prequels down. She would win an Oscar in 2011 for her role in Black Swan. The same cannot be said for Christensen.