Best Actress Ranking - Update

Here is a new update. The newly added performance is highlighted in bold. 

If five performances from the same year are included, the winning performance is higlighted in red.

1. Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind (1939)
2. Jessica Lange in Frances (1982)
3. Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard (1950)
4. Olivia de Havilland in The Heiress (1949)
5. Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)
6. Anne Bancroft in The Graduate (1967)
7. Janet Gaynor in Seventh Heaven (1927-1928)   
8. Jill Clayburgh in An Unmarried Woman (1978)
9. Glenn Close in Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
10. Geraldine Page in The Trip to Bountiful (1985)

11. Susan Sarandon in Thelma & Louise (1991)
12. Katharine Hepburn in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
13. Edith Evans in The Whisperers (1967)
14. Norma Shearer in Marie Antoinette (1938)
15. Greta Garbo in Ninotchka (1939)
16. Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
17. Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby (2004)
18. Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth (1998)
19. Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge! (2001)
20. Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

21. Simone Signoret in Room at the Top (1959)
22. Bette Davis in The Little Foxes (1941)
23. Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (1965)
24. Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame (1958)
25. Glenda Jackson in Women in Love (1970)
26. Joanne Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve (1957)
27. Elizabeth Taylor in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
28. Renée Zellweger in Bridget Jones's Diary (2001)
29. Barbara Stanwyck in Ball of Fire (1941)
30. Sissy Spacek in In the Bedroom (2001)

31. Halle Berry in Monster's Ball (2001)
32. Lee Remick in Days of Wine and Roses (1962)
33. Annette Bening in American Beauty (1999)
34. Emily Watson in Hilary and Jackie (1998)
35. Judi Dench in Iris (2001)
36. Julie Christie in Away from Her (2007)
37. Shelley Winters in A Place in the Sun (1951)
38. Audrey Hepburn in Wait until Dark (1967)
39. Meryl Streep in The Devil wears Prada (2006)
40. Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945)

41. Julie Walters in Educating Rita (1983)
42. Anne Baxter in All about Eve (1950)
43. Judi Dench in Mrs. Brown (1997)
44. Helen Hayes in The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1932)
45. Jane Fonda in Coming Home (1978)
46. Greer Garson in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
47. Doris Day in Pillow Talk (1959)
48. Meryl Streep in One True Thing (1998)
49. Joan Crawford in Sudden Fear (1952)
50. Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity (1953)

51. Katharine Hepburn in Guess who’s coming to dinner (1967)
52. Marsha Mason in Chapter Two (1979)
53. Jane Wyman in The Yearling (1946)
54. Melissa Leo in Frozen River (2008)
55. Martha Scott in Our Town (1940)
56. Teresa Wright in The Pride of the Yankees (1942) 
57. Jennifer Jones in Love Letters (1945)
58. Ellen Burstyn in Same Time, Next Year (1978)
59. Susan Hayward in My Foolish Heart (1949)
60. Jeanne Crain in Pinky (1949)

61. Eleanor Parker in Detective Story (1951)
62. Vanessa Redgrave in Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)
63. Diane Keaton in Marvin's Room (1996)
64. Louise Dresser in A Ship comes in (1927-1928)
65. Dorothy McGuire in Gentleman's Agreement (1947)
66. Loretta Young in Come to the Stable (1949)  
67. Mary Pickford in Coquette (1928-29)
68. Sissy Spacek in The River (1984)
69. Shirley MacLaine in The Turning Point (1977)
70. Irene Dunne in Cimarron (1930-1931)

71. Ruth Chatterton in Madame X (1928-29)
72. Diana Wynyard in Cavalcade (1932-1933)
73. Bette Davis in The Star (1952)

Melissa Leo as Ray Eddy in Frozen River

As I have already written about Melissa’s performance before and my opinion on her has not really changed overall, I will refer you to my initial review. 

YOUR Best Actress of 2008!

Here are the results of the voting:

1. Anne Hathaway - Rachel Getting Married (14 votes)

2. Kate Winslet - The Reader (13 votes)

3. Meryl Streep - Doubt (12 votes)

4. Melissa Leo - Frozen River (11 votes)

5. Angelina Jolie - Changeling (2 votes)

Thanks to everyone for voting!

Best Actress 2008 - The resolution

After having watched and reviewed all five nominated performances, it's time to pick the winner!

5. Angelina Jolie in Changeling

In a performance of incredibly diverse qualities, Angelina Jolie both carries and harms the movie as she reaches heights and lows while she mixes honest emotions with fake over-the-top moments but she nonetheless creates a memorable character caught in a horrible situation and her bleak appearance and desperate performance fits to the dark and gloomy atmosphere of the story.

4. Melissa Leo in Frozen River

                     

Melissa Leo gives an impressive performance that shows how the desperation and hopelessness of her life has turned her character into a bitter and pessimistic woman but while she succeeds in showing her constant determination and toughness, there are unfortunately a lot of missed opportunities to illustrate a different side.

3. Meryl Streep in Doubt

Meryl Streep is obviously having fun with this part that gives her the opportunity to chew the scenery but at the same time she allows Sister Aloysius to be more than just a villainous stereotype and shows more layers behind the stern façade of this strict and unforgiving nun.

2. Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married

With her performance, Anne Hathaway wisely took all the qualities she usually let shine in her comedies, like her charm, her loveable personality and her unique appearance and used it against type to create a memorable character, filled with sorrow and sadness that she mostly tries to hide behind a fake smile and a hyperactive personality.                       

1. Kate Winslet in The Reader

Despite being trapped in a mediocre movie, Kate Winslet was able to bring her complex character wonderfully to live with a fascinating, memorable and layered performance that successfully turns Hannah into a three-dimensional and mysterious woman and makes her actions and thoughts always appear believable, as hard as they may be to understand.

Best Actress 2008: Melissa Leo in "Frozen River"

Melissa Leo received the first nomination of her career for her role as Ray Eddy – an overworked, stressed mother of two children whose husband left her and who has to deal with financial problems. To solve them, she starts to drive illegal immigrants over the boarder from Canada to the United States.

Frozen River is a grim tale of people who see no other choice for a better life than crime. It portrays an area where the American Dream doesn’t seem to exist and life is a constant struggle against poverty and downfall. The life of Ray Eddy is no exception.

The first time the viewer sees Leo’s Ray it becomes immediately clear that she is a woman with no illusions – a face that is worn-out and exhausted but also tough and strong. Her whole appearance shows a woman who has spent her whole life working and fighting to survive and never really got anything for her trouble. Right from the first moment on Melissa Leo makes clear that life has turned Ray into a bitter, pessimistic woman.

Besides her financial problems, Ray also has trouble in her personal life – her husband left her without a word. In front of her children, Ray holds her tough façade up, but in some silent moments, when Ray is alone, her masque-like face shows signs of desperation and pain. When Ray goes out to find her husband, Melissa Leo is able to show that she both can’t go on but knows that she has to. It seems that is a combination of obligation for her children and herself that keeps her going. Melissa Leo is very convincing in showing Ray’s desperation and most of all, her tiredness. She shows that Ray is trying everything to survive but a lot of energy has been used up in her life. She seems to have turned into a woman running on ‘auto-pilot’, doing everything she can but without any unrealistic dreams or hopes.

Despite her tough determination, Ray can’t find her husband but she finds is a woman who stole his car. This starts Ray’s strange relationship with this woman who is earning money by bringing illegal immigrants over the boarder from Canada and for whom Ray’s car is exactly what she needs.

Melissa Leo shows in the scenes with Lila, her new partner in crime, that Ray is a woman who keeps everyone at a distance and whose instincts for survivial make her seemingly mistrust everybody – she and Lila don’t share a friendship, they openly reject each other but the circumstances and necessities have brought them together. Melissa Leo never wastes any second in demonstrating that Ray has come to a point in her life where she doesn’t have another choice, where even thinking about another choice wouldn’t make any sense. She needs money, not to make life better, but to maintain life as it is. And she shows that Ray is a very no-nonsense character for whom getting money is the only importance in her life – so she tries to get it without asking questions.

Melissa Leo also works very well with Charlie McDermott who plays her oldest son. She perfectly shows in her scenes with him a constant struggle between love and frustration and her constant impatience makes the viewer feel how it is often the people the closest to someone that evoke the angriest reaction. Melissa Leo also demonstrates that being a good mother is the only goal Ray can hope of achieving and she tries her best to fulfil this by a combination of strict discipline and generous love. In the scenes that show Ray’s personal life and her job, Melissa Leo finds various different personalities for Ray as she can be respectful and charming opposite her supervisor but tough and unlikeable opposite most others.

In the scenes opposite Lila, Melissa Leo makes Ray a dominant and insecure character at the same time. Insecure because she doesn’t have Lila’s apparently indifferent attitude to the dangers of their crimes and dominant because she refuses to let Lila, the more experienced criminal, be the leader in their relationship – Ray knows what she is doing and what she wants for it.

Melissa Leo portrays Ray’s entry in the world of crime without any grand gestures or big emotions. Ray knows that she has to do it so she doesn’t waste any time in asking moral questions. It is never clear if Ray has a criminal past but it is clear that she is down-to-earth and knows about the possible consequences. But Melissa Leo also shows that with her new activity as a criminal, Ray seems to start to dream again of a better life and seems to be willing to forget those possible consequences – a police officer at her door surely frightens her but it doesn’t stop her.

Melissa Leo surely succeeds in showing Ray’s constant determination and toughness but unfortunately a lot of times, she seems not able to find anything else in her character than this bitterness. It would have been a much more interesting performance if she had been able to show some other layers besides this, some doubts or worries. Too often, her stone-faced performance prevents Ray from becoming a more layered character. Even when Ray learns about a terrible mistake in her judgment when she threw a bag out of the car, there doesn’t come any real emotional reaction from Melissa Leo. The interpretation of Ray as a hardened woman is surely consistent but stops the performance from becoming fully engaging. All this also makes the ending when Ray suddenly decides to scarify herself for a woman she had spent the whole movie disliking rather unbelievable. Melissa Leo focused so much on the hardened side of Ray that she overlooked all the other aspects that could have been explored in the character.

Overall, it’s an impressive performance that could have needed a deeper characterization that gets

Best Actress 2008: Angelina Jolie in "Changeling"

For a lot of actors and actresses, working with Clint Eastwood has proven to be a sure way to an Academy Award nomination. This was not different for Angelina Jolie who got her first Best Actress nomination for her performance as Christine Collins, a young mother searching for her lost son who gets caught up in a cover-up attempt by corrupt police forces, in Changeling.

The role of Christine is surely a dream for every actress – it gives her the opportunity to cry, to shout, to fight alone against a corrupt system, and on top of that, she even gets to go to an asylum. It’s a part that needs a carefully constructed performance that avoids too obvious over-the-top acting but that is also able to capture the over-the-top moments of this dark story. And Angelina Jolie only succeeds in part.

Angelina Jolie has proven before that she is able to lay down her movie-star personality and give honest and surprisingly effective performance. And she has even been to an asylum before – in her Oscar-winning role in Girl, Interrupted she has already shown that she can effectively scream, shout and lash about while five men are trying to remove her by force. But unlike her other work before, she was now able to insert a certain naivety and helplessness in her performance. Normally, Angelina Jolie seems like a woman who could kick every police officer in the city, but in this performance, she convincingly disappeared behind the unknowing and passive façade of a mother who lives in a time when it was impossible for a woman to fight against men.

Overall, Changeling is surely not among Eastwood’s greatest work – it’s mostly a manipulative and overdone story but Angelina Jolie’s performance is, to a certain level, able to both merge with this style but also fight against it at the same time. Her bleak appearance and desperate performance fits to the dark and gloomy atmosphere of the movie while she is also able to sometimes leave Eastwood’s manipulations behind her and show a true and honest characterization of a woman trapped in a nightmare.

It’s a performance of many extremes and a lot of Angelina Jolie’s scenes only work in the context of the whole film. Her big, dramatic outbursts of desperation are clearly over-the-top and leave a bade taste in the viewer’s mouth when they are taken out of context and shown as a short clip at an awards show, but in the world of Changeling, her performance makes sense and her exasperation and anger are believable. It’s a performance that can be incredibly phony and incredibly real and raw at the same time.

Right at the beginning, Angelina Jolie is able to completely let go of her off-screen personality and show a simple woman living a simple, quiet life. She only shares a few scenes with her son at the beginning of the movie but in these few moments, she already lays the foundation for the remaining two hours by showing a deep and loving connection with him with a few simple acting choices that neither draw attention to her motherhood nor seem over rehearsed but rather make it all look uncomplicated and true. Angelina Jolie is often able to play these quiet scenes much more believable than her big emotional scenes but unfortunately, Eastwood seemed to push her to bring her character over-the-edge too often.

Angelina Jolie both carries and harms the movie. It is her character’s tragic fate that is the emotional core of the story and it’s very easy to feel her frustration and anger when nobody is willing to believe or even listen to her, when she is cornered by the doctor in the asylum, when every word is turned against her – it’s very easy for the viewer to understand her and be on her side. But when her performance becomes too over-the-top and unbelievable, the whole movie comes close to collapsing under its own ridiculousness and its most memorable and disturbing moments come when she is not on-screen. It sometimes seems that Eastwood only sees her character as a necessary but unwanted plot device to tell his story of gruesome crimes and crazy killers. So Angelina Jolie has to play a passive and weak woman while fighting against an overblown script and an undecided director which more than once negatively effects her overall performance.

But even though Angelina Jolie still knows how to make Christine an impressive character and, most of all, make her believable. It’s easy to judge a performance when the viewer knows more than the main character – the corruption of the police force, the back story of the ‘chicken coop murders’, the simple fact that most women today would not allow themselves to be treated like this, all this could be easily hold against Christine and Angelina’s sometimes too withdrawn performance but she is able to realistically show a woman for whom it was not possible to see things in the same way as the audience. She shows Christine’s confusion, her desperation, her own doubts and her fear for her son in a believable way and she also demonstrates the change in Christine as she learns the realities of her case – the naivety and inexperience of her character are gone and replaced by bitterness and anger.

The most disappointing moment of her performance is her final scene when Christine, thinking her son may still be alive, says that she has new hope and gives a big smile before she turns and walks away. After all her horrifying experiences, this smile simply seems too out-of-place and it seems as if Eastwood decided to send the audience home with a good feeling despite the hopelessness of the story.

It’s a performance of incredibly mixed qualities as Angelina Jolie reaches heights and lows while she mixes honest emotions with fake over-the-top moments but she nonetheless creates a memorable character caught in a horrible situation and for this, she gets

Best Actress 2008: Meryl Streep in "Doubt"

Right at the beginning of Doubt, Father Brendan Flynn asks during his mass: “What do you do when you’re not sure?” This will be the theme of the movie that follows this scene – a story about characters that aren’t sure of their own intentions and actions but who act nonetheless.

The main character of the story is also introduced during this mass. The viewer sees the back of a woman, a nun. She stands up during the mass and slowly walks along the aisle to silence some talking children. The way they all immediately stop talking and sit up straight the moment she appears show that this nun is not a woman to joke around with.

This strict, unforgiving and self-righteous nun, Sister Aloysius Beauvier, is played by Meryl Streep who received her fifteenth Oscar nominations for her performance. Sister Aloysius is a woman who actually has no doubt – she is certain about her instincts and believes in her own righteousness. The movie Doubt could actually also be called ‘Suspicion’ because it is the suspicion of Sister Aloysius that sets the action of the movie and provides the moral dilemma of the story – the suspicion, that Father Flynn might sexually abuse one of his altar boys.

Doubt never answers this question. The whole movie is based on suspicion, assumption and accusations and shows the battle between Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn who both defend their own point-of-views (she is sure that he abused the boy and he vehement denies it). The movie leaves it up to the viewers to decide for themselves who is saying the truth. The only character who really has doubts is Sister James (played by Amy Adams) who finds herself in the middle between Father Flynn and Sister Aloysius.

Meryl Streep is obviously having fun with this part that gives her the opportunity to chew the scenery and play a villain with all the well-known ingredients – an intimidating voice, a mouth that never smiles and slitted eyes that seem to see everything. But at the same time Meryl Streep realizes that Sister Aloysius isn’t a villain because it is never clear if her instincts are right and Father Flynn really committed a crime. Sister Aloysius is a very strong and self-confident character who, once she is convinced that she is right, sets out to do everything in her power to expose Father Flynn and remove him from his position.

The character of Sister Aloysius is another one of the movie’s unanswered questions. Neither the script nor Meryl Streep’s characterization show her true intentions. Is she really only acting on the behalf of the boy who might have been molested or is it her personal dislike for Father Flynn, who represents modernization while she is holding on to old traditions, that makes her want to destroy him? Sister Aloysius is unlikable in her dominance but does that make her wrong? The fact that Sister Aloysius is such an unpleasant woman seems to make it easy to point the finger at her and blame her as an evil woman who wants to destroy Father Flynn’s reputation – but this poses the question: Is she doing it for the right reason (thinking that he molested the boy) or is she doing it for the wrong reason (trying to get Father Flynn away for personal reasons)? Or is it a combination or something completely different? And does it even matter as long as she achieves the goal to remove an evil man from his position? But what if she is wrong with her accusations? As said before, the fact that Sister Aloysius is an unlikable woman makes it easy to side with Father Flynn – but how would the viewer see the situation if Sister Aloysius was a very nice and charming young nun (like Sister James)? Would the viewer see things differently then? In some ways, Doubt shows that it’s easy to judge people based on how they are and how they behave but in this case, it’s only the question ‘What do they do?’ that’s important. Father Flynn is nice and charming but he may have abused a little boy. Sister Aloysius seems evil and dangerous but she wants to stop him. Based on their actions, it should be easy to side with the Sister but their characters create the tension and ambiguity.

Meryl Streep perfectly understood this theme of the movie and the symbolic part of Sister Aloysius and as a consequence, does her best to show the hard, bitter and cynical side of her character. At the beginning, Meryl Streep unfortunately overdoes her characterization. When she shouts at a group of children, she seems rather like a military leader and her attempt to create a villain-like character is too exaggerated – at some point, one expects her to twirl her moustache or to get on her broom and command her army of flying monkeys. But still, these scenes show the power and intimidation that Sister Aloysius has over the pupils and that this is something that’s normal for her. Sister Aloysius is a product of a different time and Meryl Streep understands this.

What works so well in her characterization is the fact that she sometimes allows Sister Aloysius to be more than just a stereotype and shows more layers behind her stern façade. The script also provides various scenes for Meryl Streep to show that Sister Aloysius is not a monster which comes mostly across in her help for an older nun who is slowly going blind.

Meryl Streep is also confident enough in her own performance to mix her part with a sense of dry humor that might have appeared misplaced but she knows how to handle it without losing the atmosphere of the movie. In general, a lot of other actresses might have failed with the tasks of the screenplay and Stanley’s rather misplaced direction that confuses angular camera positions with artistry, but Meryl Streep is too much of a real pro to not know what she is doing and what works. Doubt is no masterpiece but an over-the-top camp fest but within this, the over-the-top performances by Streep and Hoffman surely work. When they finally face each other in her office and shout and scream at each other, the scene is as overdone as it could possibly get but both actors know how to impress nonetheless. Meryl Streep knows when to let go of the emotional reservations her character had so far and raise her voice and fight an open fight.

Overall, Doubt is a movie that could have been much better and is filled with performances that served their purpose but are often too over-the-top. Even though Meryl Streep gets to play the juicy part in Doubt, her character itself is sometimes rather one-dimensional because, as mentioned before, the viewer sees no doubt in her, only suspicion. Amy Adam’s inner conflict is often much more interesting to watch. And because Meryl Streep so fiercely showed Sister Aloysius’s conviction, her final scene in the movie is among the worst in her entire career since it comes too sudden and also because the quality of Meryl Streep’s acting suddenly drops dramatically.

Still, Meryl Streep was able to find a human core in her stereotypical character and went far beyond the expectations of the script. For this, she gets

Best Actress 2008: Anne Hathaway in "Rachel Getting Married"

Anne Hathaway received the first Oscar nomination as her career for her performance as Kym in Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married – a young and formerly drug addicted woman who leaves rehab for a few days to attend the wedding of her sister Rachel.

Rachel Getting Married is a very well-made family drama that is mostly advisable because of its strong performances. Apart from that, it follows the well-known formula of most family dramas: a feud between siblings, an emotionally unavailable mother and a kind father trying his best to keep the family together. But even though Rachel Getting Married still offers enough great moments to become a memorable experience.

The character of Kym is first introduced in rehab and she already shows that certain attitude that she will demonstrate for most of the time – with a cigarette in her hand, seemingly a little bored, but also a bit aggressive and superior. Kym’s face constantly seems to say that everything that has to do with her is more interesting and more worthy to talk about than anything related to somebody else.

With her performance, Anne Hathaway wisely uses all the qualities she usually lets shine in her comedies, like her charm, her loveable personality and her unique appearance and uses it against type to create a memorable character. Her big, expressive eyes, her usually beaming face this time show sorrow and a haunting sadness that Kym mostly tries to hide behind a fake smile and a hyperactive personality.

Kym is not a likeable character and Anne Hathaway never tries to turn her into one. Kym is selfish, irresponsible and constantly tries to push everyone away while desperate to hold onto them at the same time. She is a constant up and down of emotions, going from selfish to mean to nice to angry to depressed in a few moments and Anne Hathaway magnificently portrays all these emotions and Kym’s mood swings in the most natural way – she is able to make Kym an honest and real creation. Her performance never seems rehearsed or prepared in any way but instead very to-the-moment and natural.

Like Kate Winslet, Anne Hathaway creates a rather mysterious character but while Kate Winslet combines this with the noticeable distance Hannah keeps to the viewer and her co-characters, Anne’s Kym bursts onto the screen right into the middle of all actions. Anne Hathaway is able to make Kym an introverted and extroverted character at the same time. She constantly carries her emotions on her face, she constantly talks about everything that’s on her mind (which has mostly to do with herself) but at the same time, Anne is able to hint that Kym carries much more feelings and emotions inside of her.

Anne Hathaway effectively shows that Kym is a woman who always needs to be the center of attention, no matter what. The unforgettable scene when Kym is proposing a toast at a dinner party and talks for what seems like hours only about herself until she catches herself and ends it as a toast to her sister is incredibly uncomfortable to watch thanks to Anne Hathaway who is so awkward, weird, unlikable but also fascinating at the same moment that Kym seems like a train wreck – she’s a disaster but one can’t help but look. But even though Anne is also able to demonstrate that Kym is not evil when she tries to steal spotlight or become the center of attention – it’s just something she does naturally. It seems that Kym knows that she can’t compare to her perfect sister and her perfect husband, that she sticks out like sore thumb at every family event so she has to constantly talk about her drug problems, her life in rehab and everything else because that’s all she has to offer.

At the same time, Anne Hathaway also knows when to step into the background and keep her performance down. It is her biggest success that she never lets the grand emotions and actions of Kym influence her performance to become larger-than-life – instead, she does it all very subtly and naturally and that way is able to combine the Kym who constantly acts and pretends with a more honest and real Kym who shows true emotions and feelings.

Later, the viewer learns more about Kym and her past. Years ago, when she was still using drugs, Kym had to take care of her little brother which ended in a tragedy. In a very impressive scene, Kym tells this backstory and Anne Hathaway never tries to make this her ‚big moment’ – instead, she subtly lets the horror of her memories overcome us while Kym remains rather calm. She has lived with these awful memories for years and she knows that she will never be able to forgive herself. These scenes suddenly show a news Kym. Her constant need for affection, her way of always trying to upstage everyone and get in the center of attention, her constant neediness are suddenly visible in a new light – it seems that she is also constantly fighting for a place in her family out of fear to be rejected for her ‚crime’ in her past.

With all the great moments, small and grand, in her performance, Anne Hathaway still can’t hide the fact that sometimes she is a little out-of-her league. She is certainly on her way to become a top dramatic actress but it’s sometimes obvious that she is not there yet. Even though the script obviously puts Kym in the center of attention, it’s mostly Anne Hathaway’s co-stars who dominate the movie: Bill Irwin, Debra Winger and especially Rosemary DeWitt contribute enormously to the film’s success.

But still: from her wonderful confrontation scene with Debra Winger where Anne amazingly shows Kym’s inner pain and her search for a way out of it, her anger and her shock to her unforgettable “Daddy”, Anne Hathaway gives a remarkable and magnificent performance that gets

Best Actress 2008: Kate Winslet in "The Reader"

After five unsuccessful nominations, Kate Winslet finally took home the Best Actress Oscar for her performance as Hannah Schmitz – an uneducated woman with a secret past in post-war Germany .

The Reader is a very average movie that suffers from the fact that it takes itself far too seriously because it deals with the topic of the Holocaust. Unfortunately, as a movie, The Reader has nothing new to say or to show and seems only to exist to collect awards for dealing with such a serious subject.

But fortunately Kate Winslet was able to bring her complex character wonderfully to live and survive all the mediocrity around her with a memorable and layered performance. Even though she received several awards as Best Supporting Actress, Kate Winslet’s Hannah is clearly the central character of the film even if her screentime is limited compared to other nominees. Hanna always remains a kind of mysterious presence in this movie. Like Michael, the young boy who starts an affair with her, the viewer never really gets to know her. But despite the distance the character keeps to her surroundings, she is still an overpowering presence.

Hannah is a woman who carries two secrets with her. One is her illiteracy and the other one her past as a prison guard in a concentration camp. While she shows her first secret with small looks and gestures to the viewer very soon, her second secret is not revealed until later when she is brought to trial for her crimes. The difficult task for Kate Winslet is to make it believable that Hannah’s illiteracy is actually troubling her much more than her past. She can’t see any faults in her action herself since she only did what she thought was right – but her illiteracy, her weakness, is the one thing in her life that she wants to be kept unknown and that is shaming her more than anything else. It is thanks to Kate Winslet’s talent as an actress that Hannah’s actions and thoughts always appear believable, as hard as they may be to understand.

Kate Winslet’s accent is rather distracting at the beginning, but her powerful and strong line deliveries more than make up for that. She is perfectly able to show that Hannah’s character is a giant contrariness – she seems strong and knowing, but at the same time she appears insecure and untaught. She generally puts on a rather aggressive attitude which contributes to the distance she has to everyone around her. It is never revealed if she has any friends or social contacts – but from her way of behaving it seems that her affair with Michael is not her first kind of this encounter.

Hannah is also a woman who seems unable of any self-criticism and reflection about her own behaviour – she doesn’t seem to find any moral problems in her affair with Michael but she pretends to be appalled when he reads “Lady Chatterly’s lover” to her (even though she lets him continue with it). Kate’s Hannah also has a great chemistry with Michael – not loving, rather in a possessive, a destructive way, but still fascinating. During her fight scenes, Kate Winslet lets Hanna become a force of nature – primitive, strong, unforgiving. She is not willing to lose control over her life for even just one second because she needs this control to keep her secret.

Kate Winslet successfully turns Hannah into a three-dimensional and mysterious woman at the same time and gives a fascinating performance as this unmoral woman. But her greatest moments come in the second half of the movie. Her scenes in the court room, all her fear, her beliefs, her insecurity are portrayed perfectly. The scenes when Hanna is describing her past in Nazi Germany, with a kind of innocence because she believes that she did all the right things, are acted wonderfully. In these scenes, she has to become a symbol for what are considered to be German values – correctness, thoroughness and dutifulness. It is revealed that Hannah used to have a ‘normal’ job until she was to be promoted and decided to become a prison guard in a concentration camp instead because she was afraid that her illiteracy would be discovered at her old job. It is shown how the atmosphere of hate and terror in Nazi Germany enabled a woman like Hannah, uneducated but with a dominant and domineering personality, to come into a position where she could decide over life and death. She fought her feelings of inferiority with a forced and obsessed attitude of superiority and for her, showing her weaknesses is worse than being a prison guard in a concentration camp or going to prison. As this is the fact, Hannah is not a symbol for Nazi Germany and all its criminals – instead, The Reader only tells the story about one women and how her naiveté mixed with a tendency for violence and domination and her own weaknesses made her become the women who is seen on trial.

The fact that Hannah feels so ashamed about her illiteracy that she would become a prison guard and later take the single blame for her crimes to cover up her ignorance is very stretched but Kate’s expressive face and acting talent make it believable. The look on her face when she sees the pen lying next to her is a wonderful moment and Kate is able to make it a true moment when Hannah would rather go to prison than reveal the truth about herself.

In the part of Hannah, Kate Winslet never tries to ask for forgiveness and neither does the movie try to show her in a positive light. Hannah is a dangerous woman with a destructive personality who always acted on her own will and did what she thought would be the best for her. But at the same time, Kate shows that Hannah’s low level of education maybe prevented her from seeing a more overall truth than just her own. The scene when she is in prison and is told that she has a visitor is especially moving – the audience sees her happy, excited, waiting until she is told that no one is coming.

Only in the end, Kate Winslet’s performance as an old woman fails to reach the same level of excellence as before. Her awful make-up that makes her look like something out of Madame Tussaud’s instead of a real human being is certainly to blame, but Kate also never really turns into this old woman – rather she plays the young Hannah with make-up. It’s a difficult task to portray such advanced age in a character and Kate is not fully able to succeed.

Still, it’s a remarkable and fascinating performance of a very complex character. For this, Kate Winslet gets

Best Actress 2008

The next year is 2008 and the nominees were

Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married

Angelina Jolie in Changeling

Melissa Leo in Frozen River

Meryl Streep in Doubt

Kate Winslet in The Reader