Some won Oscars, some didn't. In the end, it doesn't matter. These are just terrific performances courtesy of some of the finest actresses working today. Note: I have not seen all the movies in the world, I haven't even seen all the movies that won Oscars for Best Actress. This is the list I have made with my current understanding of great female performances-
Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice
Streep could practically score an Oscar win by simply winking at the screen by now's time. However, Streep's talent is also undeniable. Her work in Sophie's Choice is indelible, easily one of the greatest performances in cinema. As Sophie, Streep is tragic, warm, self-destructive, and likeable. She's full of contradictions and Streep folly embodies a woman who bares a past too horrific to live with. The accent, those eyes that communicate a pain that is unbearable, unspeakable. I'll never forget this performance.
Holly Hunter in The Piano
Hunter tackles a not-so-easy task of conveying limitless emotion without a word of spoken dialogue. As the mute Ada, a woman married off to a man living in New Zealand, Hunter encompasses Ada's rage and passion in a world that expects women to be silent. That face, so pale and deathly beautiful, is a canvas for which Hunter paints her emotions. She expresses so much, evidenced in a scene in which her desire for a local man leads her to physically assault him, a violent show of passion that she never allots words to. She doesn't have to. We hear her perfectly fine.
Charlize Theron in Monster
I won't lie, I didn't think Theron would be able to pull it off. I read the reviews, I listened to the endless praise. I was still skeptical. Just goes to show you how stupid I can be and how judge mental people can be. Theron's performance as Aileen Wuornos, the first female serial killer explodes on the screen with such an incredible force of rage, aching loneliness, sadness, self-loathing, and yes, even a glimmer of hope, that Theron threatens to burn up the screen. She's so in character, not just physically (although she really is virtually unrecognizable), but emotionally, it's frightening. Holy shit. That's all I have left to say.
Marlee Matlin in Children of a Lesser God
As the deaf Sarah Norman, a former student and current janitor at a deaf educational school, Matlin proves that not age nor experience can always predict a gem of a performance. Matlin, the youngest woman to ever win the Oscar for Best Actress, is so thoroughly alive as the beautiful, angry, unapologetic, and yet magnetic deaf woman. Like Hunter, she never speaks a word but her face betrays every flash of anger, sorrow, and insecurity. It is entirely evident why William Hurt falls in love with her. I did.
Sissy Spaceck in In the Bedroom
There are those performances that make you think "God! How did that not win an Oscar?!" This is one of those performances. Spaceck is the cold, controlling, and bitter Ruth whose destructive anger over her son's murder threatens to consume her. The fight scene between her and Tom Wilkinson as her husband, Matt, is one of the most impressive showcases of acting I've seen in a long time. Our heart breaks for her after she breaks down and yet many of Matt's points are valid (although blaming her for his death? Come on? Way to be an ass!)
Liza Minelli in Cabaret
Liza Minelli, that diva that's now engraved in my memory as Lucille 2 in Arrested Development, so surprised me with how good she is here. Maybe it's because she has to be part drama queen diva. Yet Minelli digs depper, past the razzle dazzle, and finds a wealth of insecurity and volatile emotion in Sally, a nightclub singer who falls for a bisexual writer from Britain. Those eyes cast downward give us insight into the wounded soul that Sally actually is. The costumes and her kind of flip attitude towards everything can't hide the pain.
Anne Bancroft in The Graduate
Mrs. Robinson, essentially the template for modern day Cougars, is more than a sex deprived old housewife. Cold, emotionally distant, overbearing, persistent, and terribly lonely and self-conscious of her age, Bancroft makes Mrs. Robinson not a character we can say we particularly like but we can perhaps understand her motivations and admit she's irrevocably interesting.
Giulietta Masina in Nights of Cabiria
Quite possibly the most depressing film I have ever seen, Nights of Cabiria is really a showcase for Masina who is so thoroughly amazing she took my breath away. Cabiria is a prostitute trying to make ends meet, and her life is one long depressing spiral downwards. Masina understands both Cabiria's magneticism and yet alienating demeanor. She's abrupt, angry, rude, and yet has this earnest sense of hope and possibility which is attractive. The last scene, in which she walks away, defeated, alone, is so depressingly beautiful it hurts. Cabiria picks herself up once again. How? That's beyond me.
Ellen Burstyn in Requiem for a Dream
As you might have seen in my Oscars article, I'm very fond of this performance. Burstyn gives a performance of so much emotional depth and truth it's hard to believe she's even acting any longer. The red dress monologue, her final realization of the disarray in which her life is committed to, she broke my heart.
Katharine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter
Ok, so, I kind of hated the film itself, but my pal, Katharine, is just astonishing in the role of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Fiercely intelligent, independent, and cuttingly observant, she makes painful observations of those around them and doesn't often apologize. Yet somehow we like her. Maybe because she's Katharine Hepburn. Oh well.
Laura Dern in Inland Empire
Dern was grossly overlooked for her epic performance in David Lynch's Inland Empire. Dern has the task of playing multiple women; an ambitious actress, the character she's playing, an unhappy housewife, a hardened prostitute. These women could be different people onto themselves, or aspects of the same woman, or representations of the archetypes of womanhood. Dern taps into every emotion: rage, sorrow, hope, paranoia, disappointment, elation. She just keeps going and going and going. Her performance is frightening in its scope.
Diane Keaton in Annie Hall
Ditzy Annie is also affable, warm, and yet insecure, occasionally cold and uninviting. Keaton has a comedian's wit and yet also uncovers the more complex and biting emotions in Annie. I just love Diane Keaton.
Louise Fletcher in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
As the cold, unapologetic, passive aggressive, spiteful, vindictive, and monstrous Nurse Ratchet, Fletcher creates one of cinema's greatest villains. She never actually raises her voice, maybe once, but it's that cold, calculated stare that sends a chill down your spine. Ratchet considers herself too respectable for human displays of emotion. Her explanation that the polls are closed is perfectly leveled and yet you can just hear the spite dripping from her mouth.
Naomi Watts in Mulholland Dr.
I initially hated her performance for the first hour and a half or so. I thought "God! What a fake!" and then the film turns on its head and Watts switches from gratingly ambitious Betty to the bitter, angry, and disappointed Diane. Her performance as Diane is revelatory and then I began to piece the film together, and came to realize that her annoying performance as Betty wasn't bad at all, the work of a talented trickster who easily dupes simple-minded reviewers.
Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity
As the slinky, sexy, coldly manipulative and monstrously quick-witted Phyllis Dietrichson, Stanwyck is all brooding femme fatale and evil seductress. Her exchange about speed limits with boy-toy Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) is, needless to say, not about speed limits, and is so piercingly acted you can't help but smile.
Elizabeth Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Destructive rage, bad manners, contempt, spite, disillusionment and yet clinging to one enormous illusion. This is the character Taylor has to capture and she's simply marvelous. As frumpy housewife Martha, Taylor taps into emotions so cuttingly painful it hurts to look at her. The last scene in the film breaks your heart more than you thought you could break your heart for such a person.
Ok, because this list is getting really long I'll post honorable mentions at the bottom, great performances that I don't have much space to get into here:
Honorable Mentions:
Annette Bening in American Beauty
Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth
Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets
Laura Linney in You Can Count On Me
Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde
Holly Hunter in Broadcast News
Kathy Bates in Misery
Jessica Tandy in Driving Miss Daisy
Ellen Burstyn in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
The list could go on and on but I will stop here...for now.
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