Top 10 Favorite Performances By An Actress

LOL! No tomatoes. I happen to agree with you on this one, RGirl. I am a Nicole fan and definitely feel she has improved ten-fold since the pre-Cruise era. However, both Streep and Moore stole every scene in which they were present in "The Hours". I read "The Hours" long before I saw the film and I too felt that they both portrayed those characters to near perfection. Streep was letter perfect as Clarissa. She brought to the screen everything I had imagined after reading the book...and that is what it is all about. Nicole did well enough and probably deserved a nod, but not the win. Moore embodied the emotional instability of Laura Brown. You could actually feel (through her performance) her small world closing in around her. But, this year should certainly be interesting. I just saw "Cold Mountain" last night. Certainly, it is somewhat flawed, but I thought it was beautifully made and acted. Jude Law, Nicole Kidman and Renee Zellweger all give powerful performances and I think all three will receive Oscar nods. I actually prefered Nicole in this film to the Nicole from "The Hours".

I also have been a bit disappointed with Angelina Jolie's choices since "Girl, Interrupted". I loved the raw, uninhibited quality that marked her performance in "Girl, Interrupted" and that HBO flick "Gia". Hopefully, she can get back on track. I know she gets a lot of flack for her strangeness, but I believe she is an extremely gifted actress that offers something different compared to the cookie-cutter starlets that Hollywood has manufactured these past several years. We can only have so many Meg Ryan/Julia Roberts (although I love both of the originals) clones!

1. Meryl Streep (Sophie's Choice)
2. Jodie Foster (The Accused)
3. Vivien Liegh (Gone with the Wind)
4. Betty Davis (Whatever Happened to Baby Jane)
5. Kathrine Hepburn (On Golden Pond)
6. Geraldine Page (A Trip to Bountiful)
7. Jessica Tandy (Driving Miss Daisy)
8. Sissy Spacek (Coals Miners Daughter)
9. Olivia DeHaviland (The Heiress)
10. Holly Hunter (The Piano)

Favorite Actresses in the last 10 years:
1. Cate Blanchett
2. Helen Bonham Carter
3. Nichole Kidman
4. Renee Zelwinger
5. Christina Riecci

To add to some of the other posts I have read.. Julianna Moore should have definatley won last year for Far From Heaven!! It's been a long time since Ive seen a actress bring out a character from the 50's era like that! Wonderful!!
Also, the year Julia Roberts won the oscar for Erin Brockovich..SORRY!! Ellen Buryston was ripped! Ellen's performance for Requiam for a Dream was the best of that year by far!
The only other instance I can think of in Oscars recent history that kinda ticked me off was.. When Halley Berry won for Monters Ball.. What was that all about? Ok, so she got dirty, poor, and trashy for the role.. Sissy Spacek had a brilliant comeback in In The Bedroom! Wonderful performance of a mother loosing her child.. I thought that performance was quite a change for her.. Plus, she's one of my fav's anyway..lol
And yes, there is Meryl.. The movie queen! The best actress to ever live! Betty Davis is a close second.. Meryl, has been nominated many times and should have won.. She has many more parts to play and nomminations to recieve and win in the future...

Steel Magnolias I was crying my heart out during the scene at the cemetery. My dh thought I had lost my mind.

Click to expand...

I've never seen the movie, but a friend of mine who's a professionally trained actress says that's her favorite performance/scene in movie history...

ITA with everybody that Ellen Burstein was superb in "Requiem for a Dream" and in any other year I think she would have won the Oscar by a landslide. But Halle Berry said something during her acceptance speech that I think reflects on the whole decision to award her the Oscar that year: "This moment is so much bigger than myself." For one thing, not that this should determine these things, but Burstyn did win the Oscar in I believe 1974 for "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore." (Quick: Who directed it?) Secondly, when I think of all the black actors who never even got the parts they should have, much less the Oscars, it's just a travesty. Maybe it is a bit of Academy Award affirmative action, but Berry certainly did more than cry, yell at her son, and have an explicit sexual scene. I think Berry and Burstyn's performances are the quntessential apples and oranges--although Bursteyn's role too had a lot of extreme behavior, just not sexual--and all other things being equal, I would have had it as a tie, which has happened before with Katherine Hepburn in "The Lion in Winter" and Barbra Streisand in "Funny Girl." But all other things are not equal. IMO, Halle Berry earned that Oscar with her acting skills. Like Spacek in "In the Bedroom"--another great performance--she expressed the horror of losing a child. But in "Monster's Ball" Berry's character lost everything. The sex she has with Billy Bob Thornton's character to me expressed a woman who had no other way to escape the pain of her life except through sex. I thought Berry was so primal and more naked emotionally than she was physically. Everything this woman had been holding together throughout the whole ordeal of her husband's execution and her son's death comes out in that scene and it's rageful, ugly, aggressive, selfish, even abusive--yet it's also about this woman feeling something besides pain for the first time in who knows how long. Ultimately, it was truthful to who that woman was, just as Burstyn's portrayal was. Of course it was much more than just the sex scene--I think of her anger with her child's weight and overeating, her restrained rage at her condemned husband, her reaction to Thornton's racist father. It was great acting, just as Burstyn and Spacek's was, and I'm sure other's that year. But as Jeremy Irons said about the Oscars, it's mostly about timing, if the Academy thinks your time has come. Sometimes it's early, sometimes it's just the right time, sometimes it's late and sometimes they blow it and people end up with an honorary Oscar. It's not supposed to be that way, but it is. Paul Newman did not win for any of his best roles--"The Hustler," "Cool Hand Luke," "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," or "The Verdict." When the Academy realized, "Oops," they gave it to him for "Color of Money," which was still heads and tails over most actor's work, but even Newman knew it wasn't his best work. It wasn't a great script. Very good, just not that extra mile. It's just the way Hollywood works. Same thing happened with Denzel Washington.

BTW, thanks for reminding me of Bette Davis, Equestianguy. Margo Channing alone could win 10 Oscars against some of these wimps today. I'll tell you who got me with, "What the?" was Gwyneth Paltrow for "Shakespeare in Love" over Cate Blanchett in "Elizabeth." I think Paltrow is top notch and has an Oscar performance in her, but "SIL" wasn't it. I didn't see Cate Blanchett in "Eizabeth" until after the Oscars and I thought, "Didn't people watch this?" But I think Hollywood was in the mood to crown a beautiful young princess that year and Paltrow fit the bill. Not her fault. Again, just what happens.
Rgirl

Performances that I love

Juliette Binoche - Blue

Cate Blanchet - Elizabeth

Julianne Moore- The Hours, Boogy Nights

Lupe Oliveros - Chuck and Buck!

Hillary Swank - Boys Don't Cry

Betty Davis - All About Eve

Maggie Smith - The Prime of ms Jean Brodie, Gosford Park

The Argentine lady in All About my Mother

Emily Watson - Breaking the Waves

BTW, thanks for reminding me of Bette Davis, Equestianguy. Margo Channing alone could win 10 Oscars against some of these wimps today. I'll tell you who got me with, "What the?" was Gwyneth Paltrow for "Shakespeare in Love" over Cate Blanchett in "Elizabeth." I think Paltrow is top notch and has an Oscar performance in her, but "SIL" wasn't it. I didn't see Cate Blanchett in "Eizabeth" until after the Oscars and I thought, "Didn't people watch this?" But I think Hollywood was in the mood to crown a beautiful young princess that year and Paltrow fit the bill. Not her fault. Again, just what happens.

Click to expand...

ITA about Betty Davis...I find her on-screen presence magnetic, even when the rest of the movie stinks! (But All About Eve is a superb film, so it certainly wouldn't fall into the "stinks" category.)

I think another factor in the Paltrow vs. Blanchett Oscar thing was that there was a huge last-minute Oscar campaign for Shakespeare in Love...

equestrianguy said:

The only other instance I can think of in Oscars recent history that kinda ticked me off was.. When Halley Berry won for Monters Ball.. What was that all about? Ok, so she got dirty, poor, and trashy for the role..

Click to expand...

ARG! I KNOW! I thought Monsters Ball was one of the worst movies I'd ever seen. I was surprised to see Halle nominated for it, and completely stunned to see her win! That award belonged to Kidman that year, in my opinion. I think that it was the Academy's hard efforts to award the best actor/actress awards to African Americans that year to prove something, instead of actually giving it to the people who deserved it. I'm not saying Denzel wasn't good. In fact, I never saw Training Day, but I thought he should have won for Remember the Titans anyways. Sometimes I think that the Academy screws up and so they feel like they still need to award actors the awards they deserved, but for movies that were undeserving.

Although I haven't seen most of the movies mentioned, I have to say that Julianne Moore was on As The World Turns and played sisters that were more like twins. One of them had an english accent. She was so good. Even the accent was good. I have a terrible time listening to those fake accents on other actors. Like chalk on a blackboard. It was so hard to believe they were both the same person.

I have to agree with many already listed:

Sally Field: Sybil
Sissy Spacek: Coal Miners Daughter, Carrie
Cher: Silkwood, Mask

Rosanna Arquette: (remake of...)Johnny Belinda
Farrah Fawcett: The Burning Bed (made for tv I think)
Jennifer Lopez: Selena (this coming from someone who really isn't a J-Lo fan)