Believe it or not, Laura did her research and... she got that answer from Ayn Rand herself...

"... when asked by film producer Albert S. Ruddy if a screenplay could focus on the love story, Rand agreed and said, 'That's all it ever was.'" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shru...)

You have to remember that, for most of the actors, Atlas Shrugged was NEW and they had to hurry up and "get it" as quickly as they could. And, the depth of Atlas is not something you "get" in a week. As any person does while learning, Laura associated with what resonated with her. Rand's response to Ruddy struck a chord and she latched on to it.

Now, we can pontificate on exactly what Rand meant - it's a love story of self, it's a love story of life, it's a love story between a man and a woman, etc. - but in the end, yes... Atlas Shrugged is a love story, ESSENTIALLY. :)

I am sure that she will be fine. We can only assume that she was hired for her skills. It is just that very few actors - or anyone - sounds smart talking ad lib. You can find Christopher Hitchens debating William F. Buckley, Jr., on "Firing Line." They were not actors chatting ad lib. They were writers, speaking their own words.

Tangentially, I think that it is improper for us to judge a presidential candidate by how well they fire off zingers and one-liners and quips and all the other sound bites. I read somewhere that within the campaign - which now runs about a year - the candidates will speak one million words. The person who looks best on camera wins. We do not elect writers, at least not since the first generation after the Revolution.

Actors by their nature and training read the lines that others write for them. See Alec Baldwin in TEAM AMERICA: "let's all read newspapers and then go on television and repeat what we read as if it were our own ideas." Funny when it is a liberal; not so funny when it is Dagny Taggart. The movie is not the actors. We all lush and gush for the actors and actresses, but they all just read the lines they are given by the writers. It is the writers first and then the realization by the director that makes a movie. Actors are just a more complicated kind of scenary.