Darth Venal said:

The irony there is that Ewan McGregor said he was trying not to really impersonate Guinness too much "as it interferes with the acting process". Well, that may be, but whatever he was trying to do, he gave two dreadful performances and one okay performance in those three movies. And I really like Ewan McGregor, so don't take that as me having a go. He's a genuinely decent bloke and he's done some decent movies, but action hero he is not.

Well, I've chalked his very mixed performances in the PT up to an awful script, bad direction from Lucas, concentrating too hard on emulating Guinness, and too much work with bluescreen and greenscreen sets (like most of his time on Kamino, for instance).

Same deal with Natalie Portman, but more of an annoyance since she had a lot less to do than McGregor. Er, Sam Jackson, I don't think he gave much of a crap about the movie or his performance, I think he just really wanted to be a Jedi, with a lightsaber (understandable). Liam Neeson in TPM was pretty good, but he's capable of far better, I put that up to him not getting along with Lucas and his way of making films very well. Hayden Christiansen can't act.

So many great actors in the PT, yet such bad performances. Of all the potential for story, action, effects, that was wasted, I think the biggest waste may still be the acting.