[NOTE: This list has been updated from the original 2000-2009 ranking to include the 2010-2015 races; we are re-posting in excitement for this weekend’s Oscar ceremony]
Revisiting a decade of Oscar-winning performances is interesting for anyone who watches the whole awards trail (Oscar season unofficially kicks off this month with the Venice Film Festival followed by Telluride and TIFF). The clips that were repeated ad nauseam from the Golden Globes through the Oscars to highlight the actor’s work generally favor the BIG moments (thinkSissy Spacek’s “everything!” plate-breaking scene inIn the Bedroom). But these reels generally do become what we think of when we think of Oscar-nominated performances. Revisiting the actual winners is much more sobering. It’s nice to find the quiet moments that most likely started their award buzz before the awards machine started to splice together their screams and tears.
In revisiting the Best Actress winners of 2000-2009, I ended watching a lot of biopics. But even with this biopic framework, one third of the winning actresses weren’t even the leading role in their own film and instead served the purpose of a man’s memory or road to recovery. A few barely had much screen time for what we consider to be the leading role award winner. For the first half of the aughts, 2010-2015, the winning performances came from fiction and nearly all of them placed the leading women in the main role. We’re only halfway through this current decade, but the roles for the Best Actress winners over the past six years now have routinely been the lead of their film (onlyJennifer Lawrencehad to share inSilver Linings Playbook). That’s an immense improvement in storytelling and bestowing awards and its also made the category much more competitive.
In ranking the century (so far) the previous decade had many worthy performances but also its share of disappointments at how many of them were pushed to the edge of the movie they won for. And in re-doing this ranking to include the last five years, those films thrust their leads much higher because leading roles for women have become immensely better in the last five years, even more competitive than their male lead counterparts because Hollywood has given them better roles. Look at 2016 for example, the trifecta ofNatalie Portman(Jackie),Isabelle Huppert(Elle) andEmma Stone(La La Land) is stronger top to bottom than leading male. But before we find out who’ll win that match-up this Sunday, let’s take a look back at the 16 previous.
Below, after re-watching all the wins, is my ranking of the 10 Best Actress winners from the 21st century (so far). The rankings aren’t for the film’s themselves, but for the performance and how the performance was used in the film.
16) Jennifer Lawrence, ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ (2012)
Jennifer Lawrencecompletely deserved her first Oscar nomination forWinter’s Bone, but all of her subsequent nominations and this win, I see as flawed. The difference is that Lawrence played someone as proper age (a late teen) inBoneand she played her like a teen, full of determination but also a nervousness about not knowing her limits when confronting adults.David O. Russellhowever has routinely cast her in roles that should’ve gone to older actresses for what they entail—a widow inSilver Lining’s Playbook, a multiple child divorcee inAmerican Hustleand a 33-year-old entrepreneur inJoy—and her youthful approach shows. Lawrence’s approach to adults is to ramp up to yelling her lines the very first time someone disagrees with her. There’s no pausing, it’s just breakneck histrionics. It all started withPlaybookand its continued because she’s been awarded an Oscar, but it reads as a young actress who’s emulating the great emotional breakdowns ofGena Rowlands, Susannah York, Ellen BurstynandSissy Spacek, but missing their nuances in between the loud moments. In reality, this is less the fault of Lawrence and more the fault of Russell, who cast her for three roles which required someone older for the plot to make more sense but also asked her to swing for the fences.
InPlaybook,I never buy the central romance because Lawrence never creates an individual human, she’s someone who’s there to bounce off ofBradley CooperandRobert De Nirowhen her anger reveals truth nuggets for the men she encounters. And she pops off a beer cap for an exclamation point. It’s an assured performance. They all are. But to me, they don’t feel genuine and lived in and felt, there’s no understanding of the quiet moments that make up a human being, instead it’s all brash swagger.
Who else was nominated:Jessica Chastain,Zero Dark Thirty; Emmanuel Riva,Amour; Quvenzhane Wallis,Beasts of the Southern Wild; Naomi Watts,The Impossible
15) Halle Berry, ‘Monster’s Ball’ (2001)
As mentioned, the rankings on this list aren’t in order of the quality of the film, but of the winning performance. However, the way that Berry’s Leticia character is defined by the script makes it pretty much impossible for her to rise above the dreck. Re-watchingMonster’s Ballis monstrous. The film is hokey, overdramatic and downright offensive (in case you missed the cheap moral conclusion that a man can be cured of racism by having sex with an attractive black woman, directorMarc Forsterincludes cheap imagery like a repeated motif ofBilly Bob Thornton’s plastic white spoon shaping and melting a cup of delicious chocolate ice cream). Berry is given very little to do other than scold her overweight child, drunkenly ask for sex from a stranger who, unbeknownst to her, just participated in the execution of her husband, orgasm, and look fondly at the man who’s given her that orgasm (even when he vomits in the toilet afterward).
Berry’s performance is fine, but she’s merely an object to be saved so that the soul of a racist family can be saved. In retrospect, her historic first lead actress win for an African American woman seems more like the voting body went for history because, like Leticia, they wanted “to feel good”. But history will not be too kind to this simplistic film that cures simple racism—offensive words, get-off-of-my-property shotgun threats—through fuck-the-pain-away sex sessions, rather than tackling the systemic racism that’s actually ruining Leticia’s life (before she meets her formally-racist white savior): the prison system, lack of employment opportunities and lack of decent food for her son.
Who else was nominated:Judi Dench,Iris; Nicole Kidman,Moulin Rouge!, Sissy Spacek,In the Bedroom; Renee Zellwegger,Bridget Jones’s Diary
14) Kate Winslet, ‘The Reader’ (2008)
Similar to Berry, Winslet gets low placement not for a bad performance, but because the filmmakers keeps the main actress at the surface of the narrative.The Readerconcerns actions of the past reverberating in different points of the life of a man. The past includes a teenaged student, Michael (David Kross), who’s sleeping with an older woman he knows very little about (Winslet), the summer before he begins University. Years later, while in law school, he discovers the woman in a trial that his class is observing, attempting to determine her role in a mass execution at a concentration camp. The stories are tied together by Hanna’s shameful illiteracy and the young man’s shame of a love affair with a war criminal.
There’s certainly plenty to probe there, butThe Readeris not Hanna’s story, it is Michael’s. Winslet has two modes inThe Reader, detached sexuality and courtroom indignation. It’s a fine performance but it’s in the wrong category. Winslet was originally slotted as Best Supporting Actress until it became evident that she could win a career-anointing Leading Role award and The Weinstein Company—being the magicians that they are—switched her to lead after she’d already won Best Supporting Actress awards from both the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild. Her screen time is small, but unlike Anthony Hopkins win forSilence of the Lambs—whose appearance in the film clocks-in under 20 minutes—her presence doesn’t loom over the entire picture. Hanna is viewed from a shallow perspective and Winslet is as detached as a fuzzy memory. Her win is as much for our memories of her great career and less for creating a truly memorable character with this film.
Who else was nominated:Anne Hathaway,Rachel Getting Married; Angelina Jolie,The Changeling; Melissa Leo,Frozen River; Meryl Streep,Doubt
13) Sandra Bullock, ‘The Blind Side’ (2009)
There are major issues withThe Blind Sideas a film. Chiefly, that the character of Michael Oher, the homeless black would-be-athlete who’s taken in by a white suburban family, is never explored beyond some sad eyes, occasional mumbles, and a for-plot-purposes singular friendship with a child half his age. The biggest problem ofThe Blind Sideis that it’s not Michael Oher’s story. Instead the story is how his presence in the home of Leigh Ann Tuohy (Bullock) changes her life. There’s an uneasiness in this perspective that silences and infantilizes Oher (Quinton Aaron), but that’s not due to Bullock’s performance, and she can’t be faulted for that.
This Oscar winner gets prodded the most as an embarrassment that it was awarded, but Bullock is actually quite good in a quite bad movie. She volleys from suburban bewilderment, to sneering socialite, to someone who lets go of judgments. Sure, she also has silly scenes where she outwits the high school football coach in teaching Michael how to block with aggression and yes, this movie is manipulative and grossly silences the boy she’s helping, but Bullock does grab this movie by the facemask and pat it on the butt.
Who else was nominated:Helen Mirren,The Last Station; Carey Mulligan,An Education; Gabourey Sidibe,Precious; Meryl Streep,Julia & Julia
12) Meryl Streep, ‘The Iron Lady’ (2011)
Meryl Streepwas fantastic inThe Devil Wears Prada, but at the time it was something new for the most acclaimed actress of all time. She got to play a cartoon, a villain, the character who got all the great lines and instilled fear in everyone around her for her inhuman traits. But since she’s ticked that box that blustery performance has crept into her dramatic works to the point of caricature. But the Academy rewards almost every performance of hers with at least a nomination. Each winter we have Groundhog Day and a Meryl Streep Oscar nomination and I don’t think Streep has seen her shadow in a long time. I won’t join President 45 in declaring her “overrated” as an actress, but her last decade of work has been overrated by being nominated over and over.
Streep’s last Oscar win wasThe Iron Ladyand it is over-acted and caked in makeup, but her performance is also rather illuminating on the type of theatricality that goes into leaders attempting to get unchecked power and completely unwilling to budge on their world view. It is fun to watch Streep play to the nosebleeds in this way and it is applicable with the subject of Margaret Thatcher’s rise within Britain’s Conservative Party. Streep plays Thatcher in three phases: the miserly home body, the falling in line conservative and the fire and brimstone statesman. The film is a paint-by-the-numbers biopic and it does largely feel like you’re watching Meryl Streep play Margaret Thatcher as opposed to really living in her skin but of Streep’s Oscar baity performances over the last decade goes, this is her best. Even if it’s overrated.
Who else was nominated:Glenn Close,Albert Nobbs; Viola Davis,The Help; Rooney Mara,The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; Michelle Williams,My Week with Marilyn
11) Julia Roberts, ‘Erin Brockovich’ (2000)
Steven Soderbergh’s varied career has included a few dips into the corporate pool, and armed with Julia Roberts’ big hair, push up bras, and “bitch, please” side eyes,Erin Brockovichwas certainly the most crowd-pleasing. The true story concerns a single mother of three who forced her way into a law firm desk job, alienated her coworkers with her against-the-world mouth and revealing halter tops, but also stumbled upon a major corporate cover-up in a real estate deal from a company that had knowingly poisoned a town’s water supply and lied about the chemical benefits.
In a classic against-type role that the Academy loves to hand out Oscars for, Roberts is more dressed against type than she is acting against type. She is as rootable, as lovable, and as snarky as ever. She’s basically thePretty Womanversion of Norma Rae, meaning regular Jane’s and Joe’s are her concerns, not her Johns. Roberts’ performance is best in the quiet moments—like when she’s consoling a women who’s just had her uterus removed due to the contaminants in their drinking water, or when she’s re-enacting her Miss Kansas beauty pageant promises with an adult awareness of how silly it is to think that beauty can create world peace. But there is an over-indulgence in overwrought screaming matches inBrockovich—for this is not just a David vs. Goliath, little law firm vs. major corporation movie; it’s also a David (uneducated) vs. Goliath (highly educated lawyers) struggle in class (and class, as Brockovich is quick to insult)—that become the go-to inclusion in award highlight reels. But sometimes they feel a little go big or go home, forced.
Who else was nominated:Joan Allen,The Contender; Juliette Binoche,Chocolat; Ellen Burstyn,Requiem for a Dream; Laura Linney,you may Count on Me
10) Reese Witherspoon, ‘Walk the Line’ (2005)
It’s well over 30-minutes into this Johnny Cash biopic before June Carter (Witherspoon) appears and the stage chemistry betweenJoaquin Phoenixand Witherspoon is so strong, it makes you wish Cash’s whole childhood and fatherly disapproval were jettisoned entirely to make more room for their complicated story. Witherspoon is perfect as Carter, a country singer who’d been performing since childhood and relied more on her goofy cheeriness and smiling dimples than her show-stopping voice. That fake cheeriness is something that Cash would try to force her out of on stage and Witherspoon walks the line of a schizo-performer who’s singing sprite lyrics and sashaying one second and then pulling close to Cash to demand that he stop acting like a love-struck buffoon before switching back into her beaming stage persona.
Offstage, June Carter is largely relegated to a third act comeback as she helps wean Cash off of drugs. But there’s a tenderness between Phoenix and Witherspoon that pushes past a lot of the standard biopic simplicity and the actor’s duets are almost every bit as good as the real Cash and Carter duets. Witherspoon gets an ace grade, but not higher placement on the list because we don’t get enough of her in the movie.
Who else was nominated:Judi Dench,Mrs. Henderson Presents; Felicity Huffman,Transamerica; Keira Knightley,Pride & Prejudice; Charlize Theron,North Country
9) Nicole Kidman, ‘The Hours’ (2002)
Stephen Daldrydirected two women to Best Actress awards in the 2000’s; in each win—Winslet’sThe Readerand Kidman’sThe Hours—he treats his leading women as though they lack any complexity. Winslet’s Hanna can’t read and that explains her emotional distance in bed and in concentration camp atrocities. InThe Hours,every woman is suicidal for not being able to return a love they know they have. Kidman won the Oscar for playing the famed author, Virginia Woolf, whose novelMrs. Dallowaysets the structure for the film (and is loosely connected toMeryl StreepandJulianne Moore’s loosely connected future-generations-of-women story). And despite Daldry’s attempts to make his women so simple (but directing them to play to the Broadway nosebleeds), Kidman finds moments of amazing depth and nuanced naturalism inThe Hours.
Kidman’s always competing withPhilip Glass’ overbearing score of musical importance inThe Hours, but she finds lovely moments of deceptive unease, thoughtful gaze, and growing resentment. She’s mesmerizing in mundane acts—such as when she orders her servant to go to town for ginger, observes a dead bird, lies about eating breakfast or demands that her sister tell her that she looks nice. People assume that she won the award for her prosthetic nose that hid her beauty and for the train scene clip that had Daldry direct her pleading with her husband to grow bigger and bigger with dissatisfaction, but—though she lacks big time screen time—Kidman is able to build a lived-in and pained character from small moments. And that’s fitting for a film about the small bores of a woman’s day that drove Mrs. Dalloway to suicide.
Who else was nominated:Salma Hayek,Frida; Diane Lane,Unfaithful; Julianne Moore,Far from Heaven; Renee Zellweger,Chicago
8) Julianne Moore, ‘Still Alice’ (2014)
It’s easy to callJulianne Moore’s win forStill Alicea career award, but that’s more so becauseStill Aliceis a movie that doesn’t scream for a re-watch. It’s a devastating performance centered around a mother’s descent into Alzheimer’s and her family that pushes off the responsibility onto the youngest daughter (Kristen Stewart) because the disease is too much for the career siblings and husband. It’s a weepie, but you’ll definitely want to call your mom afterward. In this regard, Moore is a perfect casting because not only is she a fantastic actress who’s wet many sets with her tears, but she’s someone that most everyone really likes, so seeing her suffer through such a sad disease adds extra weight. Maybe it’s due toHeather Grahamasking Moore to be her mom inBoogie Nights, but I’d wager that many cinephiles of a certain age can attach her to mother status of their cinephiledom, via her work withRobert Altman, Todd Haynes, Paul Thomas Andersonand theCoen Brothers. InStill Alice, Moore is heartbreaking and her award was just, but who’d want to watch one of your favorites go through that torment more than once? That makesStill Alicefeel more like a footnote in this Actress catalogue, but it is most certainly a deserving performance.
Who else was nominated:Marion Cotillard,Two Days, One Night; Felicity Jones,The Theory of Everything; Rosamund Pike,Gone Girl; Reese Witherspoon,Wild
7) Hilary Swank, ‘Million Dollar Baby’ (2004)
Although Swank hasn’t gotten back into the Oscar ring since,Million Dollar Babyproved that herBoys Don’t Cryperformance wasn’t a fluke. As a 31-year-old waitress who “grew up knowing she was trash” and came toClint Eastwood’s gym hoping that he’d train her, she’s the perfect foil for the gruff actor-director.Babyplays like a sad love song. There’s a call and response chorus of his dismissive “I don’t train girls” and her “whatever you say, boss” refrain. And like a boxer shifts back and forth to get into the proper position for a knockout, so too do these performers.
Swank is more than pluck and heart as Maggie. She’s loyal because she’s so alone, and her loyalty reveals that Eastwood’s Frankie is alone because he lacks it. Frankie has a gym that’s been full of sweat and regret and Maggie helps sweep out the ghosts he’s let hang around too long.Babyis unlike any other boxing movie. There’s very little glory but also a lot of tenderness. Swank is one of the few performers on this list who doesn’t go big for her award. She’s steady. She’s in rhythm. Her smile is quite and her laughs are to herself. And it’s the right performance chord for Eastwood’s ode to those on the ropes.
Who else was nominated:Annette Bening,Being Julia; Catalina Sandino Moreno,Maria Full of Grace; Imelda Staunton,Vera Drake; Kate Winslet,Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
