While I agree she's not great, I do think you're overstating it.
I wonder if a large part of the problem might be the accent. Her accent here is pretty bad, and sounds like it's taking constant effort. I've noticed that for some actors/actresses trying to do an accent seems to slow their responses down and make their performance wooden -- as if most of their processing resources are going into trying to keep the accent going, and distracting their attention from their performance.
I don't know why they didn't cast another English actress for Mary, as they did with all the other women. Was Heather Graham really big enough at the time to act as a marquee draw for the film? Or maybe the backers wanted another American in the cast to justify their investment?
You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.
She's not one of the worst actresses ever, but yeah she was terribly miscast here. Plus she wasn't working with the greatest of scripts. Surely a 'great actress' could have elevated the material, but Graham never really got to show much range, still not the worst actress ever, though.
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