Game of Thrones, Captain America: The First Avenger, Neverwhere (look, that’s with geek kings Benedict Cumberbatch AND James McAvoy). Hunger Games: Mockingjay. (That gets its own sentence.) Forget about six degrees of Kevin Bacon–there’s going to be a new game called six degrees of Comic-Con and you’re going to be awesome at it. You know why? Because all the answers are Natalie Dormer. Cressida (Hunger Games) and Margaery Tyrell (GOT) especially are big time personalities, and they need a big time persona. (Gavia Baker-Whitelaw at the DailyDot, taking a quote from Dormer, properly pegs the actress as the rare female antihero in pop culture.)
Dormer’s presence in a film or show seems to automatically increase its quality. People somehow intuitively understand that–because Dormer doesn’t fit into any category of beautiful types, because she’s sui generis–that the project she’s involved in is to be taken more seriously. That it’s authentic, that it’s the real thing. That’s the Natalie Dormer Effect: her mere presence on a film or show lends it character and gravitas–but wicked, fun deeply pleasurable gravitas.
