YOUR Best Actress of 1998

Because the blogs have a lot of problems with polls, I couldn't get the final vote number but I looked at the poll yesterday and can at least give you the ranking:

1. Cate Blanchett - Elizabeth

2. Fernanda Montenegro - Central do Brasil

3. Gwyneth Paltrow - Shakespeare in Love

4. Meryl Streep - One True Thing

5. Emily Watson - Hilary and Jackie


Thanks to everyone for voting!

Best Actress 1998 - The resolution!

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

5. Meryl Streep in One True Thing

Meryl Streep gives a memorable and moving performance that unfortunately doesn’t give her more chances to create her character apart from the guidelines of the average script as she never gets to show how her illness and the thought of death really affect her. One True Thing spends more time letting people talk about Kate than letting Kate talk for herself but Meryl Streep’s qualities as an actress surely add to the overall impact of the story.

4. Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love

                     

Seldom has an actress ever been so radiant and full of light as Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love. It’s a typical star performance that rests on the actress’s own personality but she is smart enough to see the part’s depth and possibilities and how her character is the beginning and the end of the movie. In creating a character as romantic and charming as the movie she stars in, Gwyneth Paltrow makes an unforgettable impression and creates a wonderfully passionate heroine.

3. Emily Watson in Hilary and Jackie

In the part of Jacqueline, Emily Watson never tries to get the audience’s sympathy. Instead, she more than once shows the unlikable, ugly, manipulative and temperamental sides of her character and gives a difficult and hard-to-understand performance that seems to pose more questions than give answers but it’s a fascinating and unique characterization that dominates and controls the movie.

2. Fernanda Montenegro in Central do Brasil

Fernanda Montenegro has a very distinctive, unique face that is perfectly able to communicate anger, frustration and bitterness without becoming too appalling and maybe distance the character from the viewer. Instead, she is able to combine almost grandmother-like qualities with a strong and unfriendly exterior. In playing Dora, Fernanda Montenegro never tries to manipulate the audience but makes her character’s actions and intentions constantly believable and is always in control of what she wants Dora to communicate to the audience without playing ‘for the audience’.      

1. Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth

In the showy and thankful part of Queen Elizabeth I, Cate Blanchett is always a very dominant and controlling power, a woman who is constantly aware of her acts and deeds, a woman who is both strong and weak and learns about the dangers, schemes and possibilities of her life as a Queen. All this is done in a performance that never seems forced but is constantly extremly natural and believable as it combines the typical domineering gestures and movements one would expect of a Queen with various modern and refreshing acting choices. A truly royal performance!

Best Actress 1998: Gwyneth Paltrow in "Shakespeare in Love"

In the recent years of the Academy Awards, women have usually won Oscars for playing suffering women – it doesn’t matter if they suffer from disease, from society or other things as long as they get some breakdowns and show a lot of tears. And it surely doesn’t hurt if these women are unattractive (but of course only in the movie!). But obviously there are always some exceptions to these rules. One of those is Gwyneth Paltrow’s win for the romantic comedy Shakespeare in Love in which she shows that an actress can be a radiant beauty, full of passion and love for 2 hours and still give a remarkable performance.

Gwyneth Paltrow played Viola de Lesseps, a young woman who loves poetry and the theatre and wants nothing more than being an actress on the stage. But since it is not allowed for women to appear on the stage during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, she has to disguise herself as a man to appear in William Shakespeare’s newest play, ‘Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter’.

Shakespeare in Love is a little miracle of a movie, a hopelessly romantic and funny tale of the famous bard at the beginning of his career, suffering from a writer’s block. This story is brought to life by a wonderful cast down to the smallest parts but it’s Joseph Fiennes as Shakespeare and Gwyneth Paltrow as his muse and lover Viola who give the movie its heart and soul.

Gwyneth plays Viola with an irresistible mix of breathless inexperience and decided maturity. She shows that Viola has been dreaming of the stage and a different life for a long time. She possesses an inner fire in her character, a longing for the theatre. When she is shown in the audience, mouthing the words spoken on the stage with such a passionate look on her face, the viewers immediately know everything about this character. She finally decides to pose as a man but when her plans become reality, she shows a nervousness, a stage-fright, that explains that all this is very new but also very exciting for her. And even though Viola had only dreamed of poetry up to that moment, something different also enters her life when she meets William Shakespeare: love. It’s a romance that is so wonderful because it shows a love that develops. At the beginning, Gwyneth plays Viola as exited and stimulated, maybe even a little intimidated when she meets the man who writes her favourite poetry and she makes it never clear if this is really love or maybe just a naïve groupie who mistakes her admiration for love. But the passion between them soon turns into a truly magic but also tragic love that is unable to defy the conventions of their time.

Gwyneth Paltrow is very confident in her own beauty and charm and doesn’t waste any time to draw attention to it. Instead, she focuses on that inner fire in her character, her desires, her passion and mixes it with a childlike innocence thanks to her virginal beauty that shines during her whole performance. Seldom has an actress ever been so radiant and full of light like Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love. It’s a typical star performance that rests on the actress’s own personality but Gwyneth Paltrow is smart enough to see the part’s depth and possibilities and how her character is the beginning and the end of the movie. She never tries to outact her other cast members but instead lets Joseph Fiennes, with whom she shares a wonderful chemistry, as the title character take centre stage but she also knows that Viola is the dominating force of the story – she ends Shakespeare’s writer’s block, she becomes his muse and his inspiration and when she leaves, she has changed him forever. But in the role of this muse, she is not passive – it’s not only her beauty that enchants Shakespeare but also her inner fire that Gwyneth Paltrow so wonderfully displays in Viola. She and Will share not only a love for each other, but also for the world of the players, the theatre. The love between them enables him to write and her to act. Viola’s desire to fulfil her dreams, her unconventional behaviour are just as memorable as her unique beauty.

Gwyneth shows that Viola is the more down-to-earth-character in the relationship. She wants to live in a world of poetry and love but she also knows her duties and that she can’t escape them. There is a certain sadness that always seems to exist beneath her glorious smile. Acting on the stage is not just a diversion for Viola, it’s her way of being free, of entering a world that she will never know. On the stage, she can escape these duties and her personal life. With Will Shakespeare and his plays, she finds something that is really meaningful to her but she also knows that like any dream, it cannot last. Her love for him may be never-ending, but she knows that her relationship to him isn’t.

Gwyneth Paltrow has wonderful control over her face and knows how to use a smile or a tear effectively in her close-ups. She has to create a character who symbolises passion and love, hope and dreams, honesty, innocence and purity, a woman who could believable inspire William Shakespeare to write his greatest works – and she succeeds with a very subtle and beaming performance that may not be a true tour-de-force but which is still a tricky and demanding work that makes all these tasks look easy. It is also remarkable how easy she is handling Shakespeare’s words. In her first and last performance onstage, her Juliet is a wonderful combination of both a woman losing her love and a woman pretending to be a woman losing her love. Knowing that her happiness cannot last makes her appearance as Juliet so moving. And the goodbye scene at the end is truly unforgettable. In these final scenes, it becomes obvious that in some ways, Viola is only a plot-device in this story – she has to inspire Shakespeare and now that she has done that, she can leave again. But Gwyneth Paltrow never allowed her character to be reduced but always kept turning her into a full-flesh human being.

As mentioned before, it’s no tour-de-force but Gwyneth Paltrow so completely makes this beaming and shining character her own that it is impossible to imagine anyone else in this part. In creating a character as romantic and charming as the movie she stars in, Gwyneth makes an unforgettable impression and creates a wonderfully passionate heroine. For this, she gets

Best Actress 1998

The next year will be 1998 and the nominees were

Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth

Fernanda Montenegro in Central do Brasil

Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love

Meryl Streep in One True Thing

Emily Watson in Hilary and Jackie