We have now reached the top 20!
I honestly don't have anything negative to say about any of these performances. At worst, maybe I did prefer another nominee to them, but strictly based on their work, I find these all to be very worthy of Oscar recognition.
In fact, most of them would've been my choice from the nominees selected and, a good amount of them were my personal choice on my own ballot for each of their respective years.
I will save my remaining thoughts for the end.
For now, let's begin the top 20 with a performance from a truly underrated Irish actress.
_____________________________
#20 - Brenda Fricker, My Left Foot
Brenda Fricker will always be The Pigeon Lady from Home Alone 2: Lost in New York along with Maggie, the very warm foster mom in Angels in the Outfield.
It is very funny that a lot of Fricker's most famous roles link her as being a very warm and maternal figure, because she herself has often said she is the least maternal person possible.
And in My Left Foot, she plays Mrs. Brown, a woman who gave birth to TWENTY-TWO CHILDREN. This was such a stark number that when Fricker won, she said in her speech that "a woman who gives birth 22 times deserves [an Oscar]".
The warm supportive mother is another one of those Supporting Actress staple performances, but I think Fricker manages to be one of the finest examples of this.
Keep in mind, she is acting opposite Daniel Day-Lewis, who is truly taking up the screen with his commitment to playing the real life Christy Brown, who suffered from Cerebral Palsy.
Her devotion to him is so compelling and you can feel her warmth and care in every frame...and how proud she is of him.
This is a woman who tells her son: "If you could have my legs, I would gladly take yours"...and it is one of the most honest and genuine expressions of motherly love you can find in a film.
A truly lovely performance.
____________________________________
#19 - Patty Duke, The Miracle Worker
Patty Duke shouldn't have won the Oscar. I firmly believe that Angela Lansbury gave one of the best performances in the history of cinema as Mrs. Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate and she had every right to feel that she was robbed.
However...
This is a prime example of how just because someone was more deserving doesn't mean that the winner was necessarily undeserving.
This was a performance that was full of strong commitment and great physical work, which is only more impressive when you factor in her young age and the fact she originated this role on the Broadway stage eight times a week.
The one-two punch of Duke and Anne Bancroft make for a truly iconic cinematic duo, and I think that Duke winning here is something that is worth celebrating...but it will always go down as a prime example of how the awards process can also hurt a film or a performance simply because it is deemed less worthy when being put next to another product.
__________________________________________
#18 - Vanessa Redgrave, Julia
I had the privilege of seeing Vanessa Redgrave in a play back in 2011...sadly it was Driving Miss Daisy but hey, getting the trio of Redgrave, James Earl Jones, and Boyd Gaines is nothing to scoff at in the slightest.
#17 - Dianne Wiest, Bullets over Broadway
When Woody Allen decided to cast Dianne Wiest as the diva Helen Sinclair, his late writing partner Douglas McGrath said "All right, kill your picture then."
Wiest was known for her kooky and sort of neurotic roles, one of which we already discussed in my last volume...and sure, Helen Sinclair is a kook in her own way but this is a woman of a certain strength and narcissism that many felt Wiest couldn't pull off.
She also didn't seem to get a handle on the role at first until she experimented with lowering her voice an octave...and that is where she found the character and swept the award season.
I actually consider Bullets over Broadway to be a solid film, but it also occurs at a time in Woody Allen's career where I feel his true steady decline began.
A lot of what saves the film is its ensemble, which is fantastic and also includes John Cusack, Chazz Palminteri, Jennifer Tilly, and Tracey Ullman.
Wiest is certainly a major highlight and, frankly, who on earth could ever forget her telling Cusack to "Don't speak!!"?
#16 - Hattie McDaniel, Gone with the Wind
Even this character is problematic...hell, she is simply credited as "Mammy".
Still though, McDaniel's win here is historic as she was the first person of color to win an Oscar...then you take into account that the forced her to sit in the back of the room next to the kitchen and they made her recite a speech that was written for her rather than her own words.
Truly disgusting.
Overlooking those truly abhorrent issues, I think McDaniel is undoubtedly iconic and is truly such a strong presence in this film. At the young age in which I first saw the film, I didn't even know or take into account the Oscar win so I viewed the performance on simply being very memorable and enjoyed her energy and chemistry with Vivien Leigh.
Hattie McDaniel paved the way and while she won for the most offensive type of role she could've won for...I can't argue that she was simply just too good.
I do want to say that I wish Margaret Hamilton had gotten a nomination for The Wizard of Oz. Talk about another truly iconic performance!
______________________________________
#15 - Josephine Hull, Harvey
What I can recall was what an absolute riot I found Hull to be, and I remembered thinking "It would've been nice for a truly hilarious comedic performance like this to win an Oscar" and then I was thrilled to see that she actually pulled it off.
She was able to turn even the most banal of lines into comic gold, but even if a line was written for comic effect, she somehow made it even better. I think of her delivery of:
"Oh, Myrtle. It's a wonderful feeling to have your relative out of the house before company comes!"
She is so desperate to hide her brother Harvey (whose best friend is a 6-foot tall imaginary rabbit) that we can't help but love her despite the fact she is being so cold to her brother...and it all comes down to the comedic element and how she ends up getting herself committed all by accident when a psychiatrist thinks her character Veta is the mental case.
And then, through all the comedy, Hull pulls through with a touching dramatic turn when she realizes she actually doesn't want her brother to change.
This was one of those rare examples where the Academy acknowledged a comedic performance and got it right.
_____________________________________
#14 - Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton
Not really related to the performance itself, but I can remember being very proud when I predicted that Tilda Swinton would win this Oscar.
That season, the Supporting Actress category was divided as Amy Ryan won the Critics' Choice; Cate Blanchett won the Globe, Ruby Dee won the SAG, and Tilda Swinton won the BAFTA.
In recent years, divided races have come down to BAFTA being the deciding factor. Recent wins by Frances McDormand and Anthony Hopkins are prime examples of this...even if the latter had been expected by most to be Chadwick Boseman.
I felt at the time that Swinton would benefit not just from having something of the "recency" of her BAFTA win, but also building up respect as an actress, the fact that Blanchett already had an Oscar, and it would be a great way to reward BP nominee Michael Clayton with an Oscar.
And, it must be said, it is a great performance.
As Karen Crowder, Swinton plays one of those villains that is simply just so pathetic and nothing but a true weasel. I almost think of her as a more dramatic female version of William H. Macy's Jerry Lundegaard from Fargo in that respect.
The whole movie, Swinton tries to play a tough and no-nonsense lawyer but instead, she is completely drowning in anxieties.
All of it builds up to a truly exquisite final scene where her whole world comes crashing down and you can't help but just chuckle at the justice at play...and also maybe pity her more just because Swinton's details in the scene are just so exquisite.
She is simply falling apart and when Clooney states he wants $10 million, her almost stunned and petrified laugh as she chokes out "Where do you think I’m going to get $10 million?!" is an absolutely brilliant line delivery.
Another great line delivery, one that is almost comical as she realizes she just got owned by Clooney, is "You don't want the money?" is simply just a savory cherry on top of the scene. Speaking of Clooney, this movie contains some of his best work and this scene in particular might be the finest moment of his career, and she is able to give him EXACTLY what he needs to soar.
You know what? Watch the scene. It is fantastic.
___________________________________
#13 - Meryl Streep, Kramer vs. Kramer
When Kramer vs. Kramer begins, our first shot is of Meryl Streep.
She looks tired and flustered and despondent. This is a woman who simply has had enough and within minutes, she leaves her husband (Dustin Hoffman) and we are off to the races.
We watch as Hoffman tries to raise his son (Justin Henry) on his own and how disconnected he actually was from his life and then, when we least expect it, Streep appears from a distance watching them and it is almost like we've seen a ghost.
A lot has been said about how Hoffman treated Streep in this movie, such as slapping her to get her into a place of despair for the first scene, or how he broke a wine glass within inches of her head without prompting her (leading to the stilted surprised reaction we see from her in the film), or trying to milk her to cry by hanging the death of her partner John Cazale over her head before shooting the final courtroom scene.
Hoffman is a great actor but can be very problematic to say the least.
I have to say that it seems truly laughable that any performer would feel like an actress the caliber of Meryl Streep would need help getting to a certain emotional state. I get that this was early in her career but COME ON! She was already a respected stage actress who graduated with a Masters from the Yale School of Drama AND had an Oscar nomination for The Deer Hunter the previous year.
Regardless of that, NO ACTOR OR DIRECTOR OR ANYONE should feel compelled to put a performer through that kind of turmoil...and while I am on that topic, that goes for how Stanley Kubrick treated Shelley Duvall during The Shining as well.
At any rate, I feel like Streep gives the role of Joanna what it needs because we could simply just hate this woman for walking out on her son and leaving him with his distant father...but a lot of what Streep brings to the table is just that this is a woman who was missing something in her life, and she had to try to find herself.
In lesser hands, I think this role would've been a failure.
_________________________________________
#12 - Lupita Nyong'o, 12 Years a Slave
But hey, what a strong debut this was for Lupita Nyong'o!
12 Years a Slave is a brutal film and it is truly difficult to watch Nyong'o as Patsey as she is frequently raped by her owner played by Michael Fassbender and a source of abuse and ridicule by the wife, played by Sarah Paulson in a performance that truly shows how wasted she has been in Ryan Murphy projects.
It could be easy to write off Nyong'o's performance as being successful due to how hard it is to separate the brutal tragic nature of it; the whole "swept by a character rather than the performance" motif.
That would, undoubtedly, be selling Nyong'o short.
She simply just gives herself emotionally over to this role and while I originally thought that a lot of the success of her performance was due to the character rather than the actress, I was simply wrong.
Nyong'o has also proven how stellar she of an actress she is outside of this role, and she was royally robbed of a nomination and potential win for her work in Jordan Peele's Us.
____________________________________
#11 - Youn Yuh-jung, Minari
Leading up to the 2021 Academy Awards, it seemed that film buffs were bemoaning that a performance by Youn Yuh-jung would probably be forgotten because it was a Korean-language performance...even though Minari was receiving a lot of extensive awards attention.
#10 - Maggie Smith, California Suite
Diana: "Which category did we miss?"
Sidney: "The Best Documentary Short Subject"
Diana: "...oh damnit...my favorite category".
Maggie Smith is Diana Barren, an actress who has flown in from London to attend to the Academy Awards as she is up for a nomination.
She is not exactly thrilled to be there, but deep down, she certainly wouldn't mind winning.
And she doesn't.
But Dame Maggie did.
I adore this win so much and it doesn't even have to deal with the juicy fact that she won for playing an Oscar loser. Smith is just so freaking good at comedy and her chemistry with Michael Caine is absolutely delicious.
California Suite, however, is not a good movie. While the movie does tell 4 different stories, none of the others are worthwhile in the slightest (basically Neil Simon at his most banal...but I am also not exactly a huge champion of Neil Simon so perhaps I am negatively biased). It all comes down to Smith and Caine to salvage some form of comic dignity to the proceedings and they succeed in spades.
Smith's regal nature all played to deadpanned glory is a true masterclass in how to sell comedy in the driest way possible for maximum effect.
This was Smith's second Oscar win following her lead actress win for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which also made my top 10 for that category.
Smith manages to be one of the few actresses to win multiple Oscars that were actually richly deserved. Having said that though, I do want to give a shout-out to Maureen Stapleton, who managed to give Woody Allen's Interiors, a film that is at constant battle with an aloof pretentiousness, a sense of life and vitality.
_____________________________________
#9 - Lila Kedrova, Zorba the Greek
#8 - Kim Hunter, A Streetcar Named Desire
#7 - Linda Hunt, The Year of Living Dangerously
#6 - Jane Darwell, The Grapes of Wrath
Very few performances build to such a furioso finale quite like that of Cloris Leachman's Ruth Popper in The Last Picture Show.
And right after that burst of energy, it settles into a warm and quiet peace.
It must've been interesting for audiences at the time considering Leachman was primarily known for playing Phyllis Lindstrom on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and it wasn't as common for TV stars to easily turn into Oscar winners (even though Goldie Hawn had down it just two years prior).
It also seemed as if Leachman, at least from the standpoint of reading about the season, wasn't exactly a shoo-in to win, plus she had strong competition from her co-star Ellen Burstyn who had something of a flashier role.
Leachman's Ruth Popper is the wife to the local high school football coach who is neglected by him...and she starts sleeping with the teenaged Bobby (Timothy Bottoms), who is on her husband's team.
What I find interesting about his portrayal is how they make Ruth out to be, essentially, a middle-aged girl next door. She isn't what you'd call a "knock-out" so to speak, but you can see the beauty there...and when she starts to get the attention from Bobby, you can see her coming alive.
Although, by film's end, she is depressed and truly shutting herself out from the world and when Bobby comes back seeking solace in her arms, she will have none of it.
And with that, I will just leave this here.
Oh look! Here comes another borderline leading suffering wife performance!
Nevertheless, I am judging these performances based on their quality and how much I found them to be effective in their films, and I have absolutely adored this performance from the moment I saw it.
I also think this is such a truly remarkable Oscar win if only for the fact that it seems to be one of those rare times where a dark horse candidate who managed to slip into race actually got seen enough for people to realize she was so clearly the best.
Harden benefitted from it being a divided race, as well. Kate Hudson won the Globe, Judi Dench won SAG, Julie Walters won BAFTA, and Frances McDormand won CCA.
Of those 4, only Dench was in a BP nominee...which was Chocolat...and what a terrible film. Even though Dench had just won an Oscar two years prior, at the time I sort of thought she had enough clout to pull off a second win. Hudson seemed to be considered the tentative frontrunner, but I would've rather McDormand win over Hudson.
This just simply turned out to be one of those rare instances where it felt like the Academy just seemed to know that someone was far above the rest and they didn't vote for anyone that was crowned by the major televised precursors. Keep in mind, Harden was not nominated for any other major award and had only won the NY Film Critics Circle Award.
I am focusing too much on the awards aspect, but I am just impressed that she pulled this off because she legitimately did deserve it and a lot of key stats were broken for her to pull it off!
Her and Ed Harris smolder together in this film and I think her fire and passion matches his so brilliantly. To be honest, I think he should've won that night too, but he also had stiff competition from Javier Bardem.
_______________________________________
#3 - Viola Davis, Fences
I approached the idea of seeing Fences as a film with pretty steady confidence that it would be good...and it was, indeed, good.
I do think it lost something from the stage, but we did still get those performances...especially that of Viola Davis.
I have an immense fondness for the work of August Wilson and I do think that Fences is easily one of his best plays despite the fact it might be a cliche to say that. The character of Rose Maxson is very intriguing because she gets to play the oft-seen suffering housewife, but Wilson wrote her as a means for her to have a strong backbone. On top of that, after she learns of her husband's betrayal, he allows her a chance to take him down and then eventually cut him out of her life when he has the gall to ask her the raise the child he had with his now dead mistress.
I think the fact that Rose ends up raising the child as her own was an interesting choice because it could come off as her being a doormat, and it certainly doesn't.
That is both praise to the writing of Wilson and the acting of Davis.
I could go on and on about the quality of this performance, but I do want to share the clip of her famous "I gave 18 years of my life!" monologue before I got to my next point of topic:
________________________________________
#2 - Sandy Dennis, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
When talking about character arcs and how it seems like certain roles may not have enough to truly give an actress much to do, it might seem a little shocking that I would rank Sandy Dennis as my #2.
For those who followed my Best Actress ranking, you know that I ranked Elizabeth Taylor #1 and that I have a strong love for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as both a play and a film.
With all of that love in mind, I guess ranking Dennis this high isn't so shocking.
The role of Honey is very deceptive. She is a rather meek and mousy housewife, but she is also neurotic and easily susceptible to pressure.
Considering you have the characters of George and Martha dominating over the proceedings and then a sterling character like Nick (Honey's husband) sort of acting as the closest example to the material's "straight man/audience stand-in", Honey is almost always in the background but gets these carefully placed bits where she will chime in and steal the moment right out from under Taylor, Burton, and Segal.
Like, who can forget her yelling "Hump the hostess!" or when they go out to the desolate restaurant and she is twirling around like she is some psychotic Twyla Tharp dancer singing "I dance like the WIND!"?
This is really a performance/role that is truly remarkable in how much can be mined out of what is actually fairly sparse text. A lot of it comes down to the characteristics that writer Edward Albee used to describe her in the text, because honestly, this role could be played fairly straight for the most part and end up not being that remarkable.
It is also an amazing example of how strongly effective a true Supporting performance can be.
_________________________________________
#1 - Mo'Nique, Precious
I think this selection is sort of anticlimactic in some ways because it isn't exactly an "out of the box" choice...but I suppose you can't ignore when something is just that impressive.
I also strictly mean that in relation to Mo'Nique's performance because why not end my ranking with the ultimate example of a Supporting Actress winner being the best thing about her movie?
I was not a fan of Precious and I think a lot of that has to do with Lee Daniels as a director, but I just didn't take to a lot of the film either. I am still rather surprised it managed to win Adapted Screenplay that year.
Mo'Nique plays Mary Jones, the mother of Claireece (or Precious) who is played by Gabourey Sidibe who, if I am being honest, is also very good doesn't deserve to be roped into the negative comments about the film.
Mary Jones is a vile, despicable, and truly horrific person who abuses her daughter and uses her daughter's child (who lives with Precious' grandmother) as a means to hoard welfare checks.
Precious' child Mongo is the result of incest and her own father raped her and it is that scenario that truly sets off Mary into thinking that somehow Precious stole her husband away.
This is a performance that truly could've backfired as it could've been played one-note or come off as pure camp (see: Shelley Winters in A Patch of Blue), but Mo'Nique herself was a victim of sexual abuse as a child and you can tell she understands this woman on some dark level.
She doesn't come at her with any judgement and the results are horrific. This isn't even a one-note performance either...because at the end, when she finally airs her real grievances but also seems to accept her heinous actions, you almost feel bad for her but are thrilled when she is abandoned by Precious and the social worker Mrs. Weiss, who is played by Mariah Carey of all people and her quiet anguish at watching this unfold in front of her is very well done.
Watch a clip from the scene below, because Mo'Nique manages to truly reveal so many layers within this truly vile but complicated woman.
_______________________________________________
FINAL THOUGHTS:
It has truly been a joy for me to be able to talk about these performances because they are all truly remarkable in their own ways...and a lot of these actresses deserved better careers than they got...particularly with what I just said about Mo'Nique.
I do love being able to discuss these performers and their work, because a lot of these performances often aren't discussed enough in the manner in which they should be...or in the case of those I ranked rather low, I reveled in calling out the fact that they never should've been close to a nomination.
I don't mean to truly knock on any of these actresses, because I truly don't think there is a bad actress on this list...I mean, even Jennifer Hudson has her good moments and did a solid job in Respect.
I have also been rather overwhelmed by the volume of readership these rankings have gotten, and I am grateful for the support!
I will be continuing with the Actor categories but these may take me some time as I don't often have the same sense of interest in the male categories as I do with the women. I might even revisit some of the films to get a better sense of how I want to try to rank them.
We will see how it goes, because I am sure I will have some movie reviews coming up plus my predictions post for the upcoming 95th Annual Academy Awards.
I do know that I will be aiming to do Supporting Actor next.
Thank you all again for reading and below are direct links to the previous volumes in this ranking:
No comments:
Post a Comment