Did Men in Black II kill Lara Flynn Boyle's film career?
Perhaps the biggest surprise/disappointment about David Lynch's recent Twin Peaks: The Return in 2017 was the omission of character Donna Hayward, famously played by the beautiful Lara Flynn Boyle. Lara Flynn Boyle has disappeared from the limelight in many years. After Twin Peaks' original run, Boyle had quite successful roles, particularly in the brilliantly underrated film Happiness by Todd Solondz (a must watch film). However, after 2002, she seems to have disappeared altogether when she starred in the god awful Men in Black II
This article summarises my feelings
https://www.tvovermind.com/whatever-happened-lara-flynn-boyle/
Whatever Happened to Lara Flynn Boyle?
"Remember Lara Flynn Boyle? She was one of the hottest actresses to walk the red carpet in her time. Some would say that her time isn’t even up and they could be correct if she could just find a way to get back to square one and produce the kind of talent that people came to know her for back in the day. The only impediment seems to be that she either doesn’t want to come back, which doesn’t seem true at all since she’s expressed the desire, or people don’t want to work with her. One can only hope it would be something that lies in between those two statements since it is a bit unfortunate that Boyle did fall in love with her fame a bit too much over the course of her career."
On Men in Black II: "Whether you liked the movie or not the point is that this was a serious downturn for her career since it actually earned her a Razzie award. You know what Razzies are right? They’re the last award that any actor should ever want to get since they’re awarded based on how BAD an actor performed. Now if you take her performances from the past and hold them against this one you’d see that whatever talent she possessed for the craft kind of went bye-bye at this point since honestly it was almost like she phoned this one in. It’s fair to say that the entire movie was kind of ho-hum and suffered from the same fate of a lot of sequels, but at the same time the big, epic villain is usually supposed to be at least a little bit believable. While she did put in a performance it wasn’t exactly something that people were expecting from someone that’s had such great career up to a certain point.
Lara didn’t so much let herself go as she kind of let it slip that she was there to get famous and then coast along on the residuals. She took her craft seriously enough when it was time to get to work but when the end of the day came she kind of just wanted to have fun and not worry about the details. Unfortunately when you want to stay on top the details are kind of important."
What are your thoughts?