Ranking the Best Actress Winners of the Decade
This is usually the time of the year that I spend talking about the best-received Couch pieces of the last year. But COVID-19 has made our 4th blogaversary considerably more muted, for as you might have noticed, there has been a whole lot less to write about with the world under lockdown.
This is also the time of year where I’d start peppering with you some of the best film, music, sports and television of the first half of the year. But with COVID-19 greatly lessening the presence of new sports and music, and essentially halting new movies and television, we have had very little of that to write about. Instead, what I’m hoping to do over the next several weeks is do what many publications and TV channels alike have been doing over the last 5 months: retrospectives!
More specifically, I’m going to be looking back at the last decade in major awards show decisions. The Grammys and the Oscars— but really the Hollywood awards circuit in general —have become annual viewing experiences and emotional investments for me. They’re my favorite thing outside of actual sporting events to get needlessly worked up and competitive about, and it’s over the last decade that those annual loud and unsolicited opinions of mine really began.
Previously, we've talked about the Grammy for Best New Artist, for Record of the Year, and for Song of the Year. We've also discussed the Oscar for Best Director, and for Best Actor.
This week, we're keeping it in the Oscars for the other premier acting award, Best Actress. Note that the years listed in the rankings denote the year of the film that they were nominated for, not the year of the ceremony itself.
The Academy Award for Best Actor or Actress is, as you can imagine, perhaps the highest individual honor an actor can receive. So it stands to reason that it often is one of the main storylines from Oscar night-- in some cases even the storyline, if we have a surprise winner while the rest of the night goes to chalk.
What's remarkable about the Best Actress race, though, is that for one of the most prestigious awards the Academy can bestow, it's been a decade of remarkably anti-climactic wins. With the exceptions of one bona fide stunner, and one instance in which the awards circuit had been somewhat split heading into the Oscars, both of which will be touched on later in this article, the ultimate Academy Award winning-actress came into the ceremony riding a coronation wave of Hollywood awards circuit dominance. Furthermore, in nearly half the instances, the Best Actress-fronted film was a far less acclaimed and/or popular film than their Best Actor-fronted contemporaries. So much so, in fact, that in preparation for this piece, I had to watch 5 movies I had never seen before.
All this being said, when it came to the defining actress' performances of the last decade, what I lacked in expertise I tried to make up for in research. So without further ado, my rankings of the decade’s winners for Best Actress:
10. Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
Just like in the Actor piece, I'm probably letting a bit of personal bias show with this first one. But I've never really been aboard the J-Law Hype Train, even when that train was blasting full steam ahead, and the same extended for the actual movie itself. Silver Linings Playbook and Lawrence were both absolutely beloved by critics and audiences alike, but I found the movie unmemorable and Lawrence's brazen performance honestly among the weaker ones in her filmography. I'm mostly still upset this award didn't go to young Quvenzhané Wallis, who was marvelous in Beasts Of The Southern Wild.
9. Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine (2013)
Cate Blanchett is one of the most consistently good actresses in Hollywood today, there's no question in my mind. (And I'm not just saying that because she was Galadriel.) That said, this was a weak win. Maybe it was just my general disdain for Blue Jasmine, or for Woody Allen, that was coloring my experience, but I found Blanchett's accent all over the place, and her bluster a bit too much to be believed, even for a character that was supposed to be oblivious and obnoxious. It's tough to see why this was universally considered to be a better performance than Amy Adams in American Hustle, Sandra Bullock in Gravity, or Judi Dench in Philomena.
8. Emma Stone, La La Land (2016)
Look. I love Emma Stone. I love La La Land. I loved Emma Stone in La La Land. So why is this ranked so low? Because if we're being honest here, as good as Emma was, she was pretty much playing herself. Yes, she was also singing and dancing, but was her singing and dancing really good enough to warrant an Oscar? Most would say no. This was also a bit of a disappointing choice considering it was one of the few very competitive races this decade; the awards circuit had seen its spoils shared amongst Stone, Elle's Isabel Huppert and Jackie's Natalie Portman, and there was no clear frontrunner coming into the night.
7. Renee Zellweger, Judy (2019)
I will admit, I do not know Judy Garland very well; I've seen Wizard Of Oz as many times as my flying-monkey-phobic brain will allow me, but that's about it. However, I watched some YouTube videos and in retrospect find Zellweger's impression...lacking, to put it nicely. That said, she did a terrific job capturing the sad inner turmoil and loneliness of a quietly tortured soul.
6. Julianne Moore, Still Alice (2014)
Julianne Moore's portrayal of a college professor with familial Alzheimer's disease was definitely the highlight of an often-lifeless film. Much of the movie sees Moore essentially just playing a healthy college professor, so I'm not really sure that it was a standout that deserved a win in a year of stellar acting performances (Marion Cotillard, Rosamund Pike, and Reese Witherspoon all would have been solid choices, too). That said, there's no question her slow descent into Alzheimer's was effective and heartbreaking.
5. Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
The only sadness I felt about Frances McDormand winning when she did was that it continued the trend of rewarding the physical, effusive acting performances over the more restrained, introspective performances such as Sally Hawkins in Shape Of Water or Saoirse Ronan in Lady Bird. But that's the only sadness I felt, over what was surely a deserved victory. Three Billboards was a riproaring emotional rollercoaster and McDormand was the brilliant acerbic epicenter.
4. Brie Larson, Room (2015)
Room deserved so much more acclaim than the sole Academy Award it got. But the good news is that sole award could not have been more deserving: Brie Larson was tremendous as a young mother in forced captivity. She may not have had to undergo a tremendous physical transformation or adopt an accent, but the emotional weight of the entire movie fell on her shoulders. The interplay between her and the brilliant young Jacob Tremblay was so consistently delightful, and made a movie that spent the majority of its story in a dimly lit small shed one that you couldn't take your eyes off of.
3. Olivia Colman, The Favourite (2018)
I'll start with a disclaimer: I'm an Olivia Colman stan. So it was already going to be hard for me to not like her. But despite my high expectations, she still blew me away as the emotionally unstable, easily impressionable Queen Anne. All three lead actresses in The Favourite were marvelous, but it was Colman, equal parts terrifying and hilarious, that was the key ingredient to the movie's success. Her win also was one of my favorite Oscar moments in recent history, not just because it led to a legendary speech, but because of how major an upset it was. Glenn Close had nearly swept the awards circuit, and most forecasters saw her taking the Academy Award as a culmination of a storied career. That Colman won remains one of the more pleasant surprises for me.
2. Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady (2011)
Meryl Streep has become such an awards show mainstay that at this point it's probably easier for her to illicit eye-rolls than it is to impress people. Our own President very crucially and eloquently called Streep "one of the most overrated actresses in Hollywood." But the thing about getting used to legends is that you often forget how truly legendary they are (see: James, LeBron). And Meryl Streep in Iron Lady was nothing short of a legendary acting performance. The drive, emotion and sharpness with which she portrayed Margaret Thatcher would have been great work on its own. But the fact that she also threw in a note-perfect impression of the famous Prime Minister only added to its extreme quality. This win was a no-brainer.
1. Natalie Portman, Black Swan (2010)
Black Swan was, surprisingly, one of the films I needed to watch for the first time in preparation for this piece. I say surprisingly because the movie was a big cultural hit, but I just missed it at the time it was all the rage. Having seen it now, I can confidently say that if you, like me, have not gotten around to it, you are missing out on not only a pulsating thriller, but Natalie Portman's finest acting job of her entire career. As thrilling, creepy, and daring as this plot was, it's hard to see it working without Portman at the helm. As Nina, she perfectly brings out both the 'white swan' and 'black swan' aspects of her character, on and off the stage. Natalie is amazingly believable as a timid, graceful, and innocent young woman and somehow, equally believable as the 'unleashed,' dedicated and aggressive woman she becomes in her pursuit of ballet glory. Besides, while I often lament the over-emphasis placed on physical transformation, it is noteworthy how much work she put into ballet training and slimming down to a ballerina's figure, and how effectively that hard work paid off here. Despite Natalie Portman being a celebrity for really the entirety of my life (#starwars), I see her now only as Nina, the splendid ballerina in Swan Lake.
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