Passage: George Lucas, Rick McCallum, and casting director Robin Gurland auditioned over 200 actresses for the part of Padmé Amidala. They chose 16-year-old actress Natalie Portman to play the role. According to The Phantom Menace production notes, "The role required a young woman who could be believable as the ruler of that planet, but at the same time be vulnerable and open." Portman's performances in The Professional (1994) and Beautiful Girls (1996) impressed Lucas. He stated, "I was looking for someone who was young, strong, along the lines of Leia. Natalie embodied all those traits and more."Portman was a unique choice because she was unfamiliar with Star Wars. "My cousins had always been obsessed with the films, yet I hadn't even seen them before I got the part," she says. "When it all happened for me, my cousins were exclaiming, 'Oh, my God, you're in Star Wars!'" She told a CNN interviewer, "I really wasn't aware of how big a deal Star Wars was ... and when I saw the films, I really liked them, but I still didn't really understand how many ... were passionate fans of this film." Portman was, however, enthusiastic over being cast as the queen of Naboo, a character she expected to become a role model: "It was wonderful playing a young queen with so much power. I think it will be good for young women to see a strong woman of action who is also smart and a leader."In The Phantom Menace, Portman had to portray a character younger than herself. In Attack of the Clones, however, her character had aged 10 years. Portman had aged only three years between the two films. She remarks, "[Lucas] wants to make sure I seem older than Anakin in Attack of the Clones, so it's believable that I can be bossing him around, and he's a little intimidated. She looks at him as a little boy – at least for the first half of the film."Portman signed a contract to play Padmé in the three prequel films. Reactions by critics to her performances were largely negative. James Berardinelli called her acting in The Phantom Menace "lackluster,"...

Question: how many actresses tried out to play padme amidala?
200 actresses