Best Actress Ranking - Update

Here is a new update - the class of 2001. The newly added performances are 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. Anne Baxter in All about Eve (1950)
42. Judi Dench in Mrs. Brown (1997)
43. Helen Hayes in The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1932)
44. Jane Fonda in Coming Home (1978)
45. Greer Garson in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
46. Doris Day in Pillow Talk (1959)
47. Meryl Streep in One True Thing (1998)
48. Joan Crawford in Sudden Fear (1952)
49. Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity (1953)
50. Katharine Hepburn in Guess who’s coming to dinner (1967)

51. Marsha Mason in Chapter Two (1979)
52. Jane Wyman in The Yearling (1946)
53. Martha Scott in Our Town (1940)
54. Teresa Wright in The Pride of the Yankees (1942) 
55. Jennifer Jones in Love Letters (1945)
56. Ellen Burstyn in Same Time, Next Year (1978)
57. Susan Hayward in My Foolish Heart (1949)
58. Jeanne Crain in Pinky (1949)
59. Eleanor Parker in Detective Story (1951)
60. Vanessa Redgrave in Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)

61. Diane Keaton in Marvin's Room (1996)
62. Louise Dresser in A Ship comes in (1927-1928)
63. Loretta Young in Come to the Stable (1949)  
64. Mary Pickford in Coquette (1928-29)
65. Sissy Spacek in The River (1984)
66. Shirley MacLaine in The Turning Point (1977)
67. Irene Dunne in Cimarron (1930-1931)
68. Ruth Chatterton in Madame X (1928-29)
69. Diana Wynyard in Cavalcade (1932-1933)
70. Bette Davis in The Star (1952)

YOUR Best Actress of 2001

The poll results are:

1. Nicole Kidman - Moulin Rouge! (22 votes)

2. Halle Berry - Monster's Ball (13 votes)

3. Sissy Spacek - In the Bedroom (4 votes)

4. Judi Dench - Iris & Renée Zellweger - Bridget Jones's Diary (2 votes)

Thanks to everyone for voting!

Best Actress 2001 - The resolution!

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

5. Judi Dench in Iris

In playing Iris, a philosopher and writer who suffers from Alzheimer disease, Judi Dench gives a typically dignified portrayal that contrasts very effectively with later scenes of despair and illness and she believably shows that the knowledge about her own situation is the most important thing for a woman who has always put knowledge above everything else. Even though her later scenes of loneliness and confusion don’t offer much of a challenge for her, Judi Dench gives a very moving and memorable performance.

4. Halle Berry in Monster's Ball

                     

Halle Berry gives a surprisingly raw and powerful performance as a woman who suffers a series of devastating tragedies but unfortunately is not very consistent in her portrayal and mixes scenes of overwhelming emotions and truth with moments of awkward over-acting and shrill hysterics. Still, it’s a harrowing and unforgettable demonstration of a hopeless and helpless soul.

3. Sissy Spacek in In the Bedroom

Sissy Spacek gives an uncompromising portrayal of a grieving mother who retreats more and more into her own world of silence and anger. It’s a fascinating, honest and subtle performance that offers a lot of unforgettable images. Unfortunately, the character of Ruth is very underwritten and more than once steps into the background but Sissy Spacek is able to create a complex and disturbingly real character who has no way out of her sorrow and sadness.

2. Renée Zellweger in Bridget Jones's Diary

In the role of Bridget, Renée Zellweger creates a unique and hilarious character who doesn’t need big dramatic scenes of despair and anger to be unforgettable. Thanks to Renée, Bridget becomes a very real heroine who amusingly and awkwardly fights her way through life and love. Her greatest success is that she never takes herself, the role of Bridget or the movie too seriously – instead she portrays all of Bridget’s facets in a very nonchalant-way and so helps to make her incredibly charming and delightful.

1. Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge!

In Moulin Rouge!, Nicole Kidman gives a star-performance on the highest level. From the first moment, she completely dominates the screen and is wonderfully able to survive all the craziness around her. In a loud and over-the-top movie, Nicole Kidman prevents Satine from ever stepping into the background and shows her character’s arc believably and effectively. It’s a fascinating and unforgettable performance that is funny, touching, crazy and romantic.

Best Actress 2001: Halle Berry in "Monster's Ball"

Like Sissy Spacek in In the Bedroom, Halle Berry plays a mother who mourns the loss of her son but Halle Berry’s Leticia Musgrove faces even more tragedies in her life: before the death of her son caused by a hit-and-run-accident, her husband is executed in prison. Later, she meets a white man and starts a relationship with him, not knowing that she shares a tragic connection with him.

In showing her character’s grief and sorrow, Halle Berry chose the exact opposite route than Sissy Spacek. While Sissy showed a woman who becomes more and more introverted and who grieves silently, Halle Berry makes Leticia an emotional firework who openly and without any reservation shows how much the tragedies of her life affect her.

In her first scenes, Halle already gives us a good picture of Leticia: she is tired. Tired of going to a prison to visit her husband, tired of everything. It’s the day of his execution but she has bigger problems in her life, like her too old car. Leticia is a woman whose sole ambition is to survive. She doesn’t expect anything out of life anymore. Halle Berry is perfectly able to show the two extreme parts of Leticia – she is a woman who can’t fight anymore but at the same time, she keeps fighting.

In a lot of parts, it’s an astonishingly raw and powerful performance. When we see her in the hospital, crying helplessly, overwhelmed by the death of her son, Halle Berry is emotionally devastating. She is not afraid to let every emotion be bigger than the next, making her loss and grief absolutely tragic and her uncompromising picture of a woman who just lost her child hits the viewer hard.

Halle Berry succeeds in making these overpowering emotional outbursts a normal part of Leticia’s character and her acting is luckily able to make most of these scenes honest and natural instead of over-the-top and awkward.

Unfortunately, Halle Berry does not succeed all the time. While she reaches incredible heights in her performance, she is not always able to avoid various scenes with unbelievable overacting and shrill hysterics that more than once threaten to destroy everything that she achieves in her great scenes. When she is hitting her son because he ate chocolate, she looks so uncomfortable and like a bad drama student who doesn’t know what to do, where to put her arms, how to deliver a line, how to act at all.

It’s also hard to praise her performance while knowing that it also contains one of the worst acted scenes ever by an Oscar-winner, her infamous “Make me feel good”-scene. Halle Berry has all the right instincts in this scene: Leticia is drunk, desperate and still grieving – there is no reason for her to act logical or “normal”, but she simply fails horribly in the execution of the scene which as a result feels out of place and could have destroyed the whole performance.

But even though Halle Berry is uncomfortable to watch in some of her bad scenes, one can’t help but feel overwhelmed by Leticia’s misery and Halle Berry’s ability to bring this all to life without ever making it appear unbelievable.

The most fascinating aspect of this performance are the final minutes. Halle Berry’s wordless final scenes, the look on her face, her shock, her disbelieve und ultimately her acceptance are played incredibly beautifully and really show that Halle completely understood and inhabited this character. It’s a wonderful display of subtlety that was grandly missed in this performance up to this point.

Unfortunately Halle Berry’s performance is not very consistent and offers a constant up-and-down of excellency and awkward overacting. Still, Monster’s Ball is a very strong movie which is due to Halle Berry’s and Billy Bob Thornton’s (mostly) realistic portrayals of two hopeless and helpless souls.

For this, she gets

Best Actress 2001

The next year will be 2001 and the nominees were

Halle Berry in Monster's Ball

Judi Dench in Iris

Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge!

Sissy Spacek in In the Bedroom

Renée Zellweger in Bridget Jonses's Diary