Her performance was bad, but I'm still glad she was cast, because I've seen so many movies where they cast someone not that attractive to play this desirable woman who all the men want, and it's so unbelievable. At least Oliver Stone was smart enough to actually cast an attractive, desirable woman for the role. I didn't even care that Hannah's acting was bad in the movie. It was a small role anyway.

Darryl Hannah played her character perfectly. Remember, her character is simply another object to acquire with wealth - like the new suits, watch, artwork, condo, and more money. Her character was not supposed to be very deep or complex. She was simply another object.

Daryl Hannah apparently didnt understand her character and wasnt sure how to play her and I think that came out in the performance. However, since her character seemed conflicted about herself, I thought her performance worked in a roundabout way. Some people felt that Hannah simply didnt have to talent to play a bad guy, but I think her performance in Kill Bill II put that charge to rest.

Ironically, I think her performance worked, though I don't think it was at all intentional on her partit was kind of dumb luck that it came together.
Here's why:
Hannah clearly wasn't comfortable playing this roleand I think that's why she wound up playing the role better than given credit for. Her character strikes me as someone who knows that she's well out of her league, a guppy swimming with sharks and trying to hold her own and keep up, and she's not at all comfortable in her own skinshe knows she's not what she'd like people in that crowd to believe that she is, and she seems nervous that she's going to be found out and outed for it at any time.
Think about it: She's not terribly gifted as an interior decorator, and will probably have trouble adapting as styles inevitably change and evolve. She's not dumb, but doesn't come off as being highly intelligent or cultured (though like everything else, she tries to fake it), or having any kind of soul at all. She's not terribly interested in anything more than being with someone who can take care of her and give her every last thing she wantsbut likely knows deep down that she's not really pretty enough to be that trophy wife. There's a reason that she winds up with Budhe's not much different than her in that he's in over his head, and despite trying to fit in and look calm and cool while doing it, it's obvious that neither one of them are ever truly as self-assured as Gecko and others. It's Bud's naivety and general newness to this scene that has him thinking that Darien's "performance" is genuinethe "vets" in that crowd probably don't think of her as anything more than a hook-up/fling (like what she probably had with Gordon). It takes that blowup in the apartment for him to realize that she's not at all what he thoughtI think he even sees his apartment differently (for the cheap tacky plastic faade that it really is) the second he's done with her.

Her first line, her last line and everything in-between.

In the American 80's Daryl Hannah's look was considered very attractive (Splash, Roxanne, etc.) but in hindsight it's a bit pretentious and hugely dated. That shoulder-pad whore Gekko sends over to Bud's apartment looks like an anorexic transvestite. Bud opens the door and she's standing there like every man's dream date, but again that big hair bony face thing was very mid-80s. Then Bud meets Darien and she is heaping praise on Gordon's exquisite taste in art, referring to all that fcking garbage hanging on his wall it's just pathetic. And of course she "decorates" Bud's swanky new apartment with even more tawdry adolescent crap. No thanks.

She was never a great actress and it could be argued that her only true skill was on the casting couch (offscreen) which would explain her agent's ability to get her significant roles in A-lister movies.
Some of the previous comments on this thread speak to the Darrien character as the personification of 80s greed, maybe so, but they could have cast a more compelling actress to pull off a more convincing seduction of Budd Fox.

I think everyone goes too hard on ol' Darrien!
She has an important part in the movie. She is the most important material item Bud wants to acquire with his newfound wealth. I don't find Daryl Hannah particularly attractive, but she's just the type of girl Bud would like and use as another symbol of his success.
When I first watched the movie I hated her, especially for ditching Bud when he turned on Gekko. But after watching it again you can see she really has feelings for Bud, just not enough to give all she's worked for up to stay with him.

Sharon Stone would have nailed it.

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I felt like her character was perfect for what the film was portraying.
The concept was greed makes you soulless & without emotion and that was Darryl's character. Only a person without a soul would want a woman like that. She left his life when he got his soul back

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And she's making some really bad B- movies too.

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Daryl Hannah is a beautiful woman, and I like her acting in most movies, but not in this one. She was unconvincing as a snobby socialite. But I still think Oliver Stone was correct in casting her, because I hate it when they cast women in roles of highly desirable women with actresses who aren't all that great looking (even though they are decent actresses). I think you've got to cast a beautiful woman in this role, even if she sucks at acting, to make me believe Bud would take the risks he did for the "good" life.

To put it simply, she's a below-average actress, and it was a horribly-written character with God-awful lines. Other than that.

all the women in this movie looked like menwas that an 80's thing??!
I always think the same thing whenever I watch this movie. The women all look so masculine. I'm sure the huge 80s shoulder pads didn't help. That outfit Daryll Hannah is wearing when she and Bud break up is one of the ugliest things I've ever seen. She looks like she's wearing a footballer's uniform under that suit.

@ldarrisa-1 What's strange is that both Daryl Hannah and Sean Young (Kate Gekko) were in
Blade Runner
, and in that movie they looked terrific. Sean Young looks atrocious in this movie.
As for Bud's mother, wasn't she the only woman in the movie who wasn't soulless?

It must have been winter. Anyway I think she looked damn fine in that little stroll out of the surf. I must have a thing for tall blondes

all the women in this movie looked like menwas that an 80's thing??! The blonde in the car, Daryll Hannah, the only bonkable woman (in my opinion) was his mother!! surely Gekko could've afforded a better looking womanand the scene when they were at the beach and she comes out of the surf- in a wetsuit!! are you kidding me??! what a missed opportunity!! If you can't do the James Bond girl in a bikini, then why have a beach scene in the first place??!

I was wondering why would she be cast as the love interest of Bud, seeing how bad she looked in every aspect - her masculine face and boyish body, her fvcked up hair, her crappy "art", everything about her character screamed grotesque.
But then Gecko tells Bud, as he shows him a crappy painting with a brown stain on a vomit green background "look at this art piece, i bought it for $60 000, and now i could sell it for $600 000 it's an illusion, and money make it real, and the more real it becomes, the more people want it".
And then I remembered he says the same thing about Darien, the fvcker sold her to Bud with something like "she's the best money can buy, when you'll have more money you can have this beauty".
But then, in the meting with the union guys, Geko puts his plate on the table, but it falls, as there was no table, it was some crappy art piece brought in by Darien. She decorated Bud's house with a mix of pharaonic lavishness and homeless decrepitude, nothing short of strident insanity.
So yeah, in the end, I think she's supposed to be an impostor, a hollow illusion, and give that sh!tty vibe - Bud seduced by a sh!tty entity. The thing is, she looked and sounded fvckin terrible, but I've seen her in Bladerunner, and she looked fascinating there. So yeah, I think Stone cast her as some kind of a dead shell of a human being, a gangrened artist.

I just saw this movie for the first time last night, and I was struck by Daryl Hannah's wooden and inept performance. I didn't know she got the Razzie, but well done!

The part might have been written to balance and comment in some way with Sean Young's character as Gordon's wifebut then that actress pissed everyone off on the set, was fired, and her scenes cut.
(Oliver Stone's never been particularly good with female characters, anyway.)
.

It's a thin part, and doesn't really carry enough weight to be a romantic lead.
The only function of the part, at least in the finished film, is to be a rather broad parody of a certain type of facile sophisticate. The part does bear on the primary storyline, somewhat, in that Bud's being taken in by her pretensions is consistent with his lack of any basic judgment.
There's no real emotional content to the part, though. I wonder if the original conception was more meaty, and it wound up the way it did due to Hannah's limitations (perhaps combined with other things: like Stone's ultimate lack of interest in that side of Bud).