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. Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth (1998)
18. Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
19. Simone Signoret in Room at the Top (1959)
20. Bette Davis in The Little Foxes (1941)

21. Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (1965)
22. Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame (1958)
23. Glenda Jackson in Women in Love (1970)
24. Joanne Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve (1957)
25. Elizabeth Taylor in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
26. Barbara Stanwyck in Ball of Fire (1941)
27. Lee Remick in Days of Wine and Roses (1962)
28. Emily Watson in Hilary and Jackie (1998)
29. Julie Christie in Away from Her (2007)
30. Shelley Winters in A Place in the Sun (1951)

31. Audrey Hepburn in Wait until Dark (1967)
32. Meryl Streep in The Devil wears Prada (2006)
33. Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945)
34. Anne Baxter in All about Eve (1950)
35. Judi Dench in Mrs. Brown (1997)
36. Helen Hayes in The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1932)
37. Jane Fonda in Coming Home (1978)
38. Greer Garson in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
39. Doris Day in Pillow Talk (1959)
40. Meryl Streep in One True Thing (1998)

41. Joan Crawford in Sudden Fear (1952)
42. Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity (1953)
43. Katharine Hepburn in Guess who’s coming to dinner (1967)
44. Marsha Mason in Chapter Two (1979)
45. Jane Wyman in The Yearling (1946)
46. Martha Scott in Our Town (1940)
47. Teresa Wright in The Pride of the Yankees (1942) 
48. Jennifer Jones in Love Letters (1945)
49. Ellen Burstyn in Same Time, Next Year (1978)
50. Susan Hayward in My Foolish Heart (1949)

51. Eleanor Parker in Detective Story (1951)
52. Vanessa Redgrave in Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)
53. Diane Keaton in Marvin's Room (1996)
54. Loretta Young in Come to the Stable (1949)  
55. Mary Pickford in Coquette (1928-29)
56. Sissy Spacek in The River (1984)
57. Shirley MacLaine in The Turning Point (1977)
58. Irene Dunne in Cimarron (1930-1931)
59. Ruth Chatterton in Madame X (1928-29)
60. Diana Wynyard in Cavalcade (1932-1933)

61. Bette Davis in The Star (1952)

Lee Remick as Kirsten Clay in Days of Wine and Roses

Lee Remick seems very often to be the typical „fifth“ nominee – an actor or actress who often gets lost in the competition of four more well-known performers and performances (other examples that come to my mind are Martha Scott in Our Town or Eleanor Parker in Caged). 1962 saw Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Geraldine Page and Anne Bancroft battle it out in the Best Actress category, with signature work from nearly everyone involved and Lee Remick often seems to just be along for the ride…But very often, the “fifth nominee” does in no way need to hide between more famous co-nominees (Luise Rainer is basically the “fifth nominee” in 1937 and she deservedly won), as great performances don’t only come in movies that are more remembered today and are not only given by well-known performers. But even if Lee Remick might be the fifth nominee from today’s point of view, I actually think that she had a much better chance at the gold than most think today. Apparently, Bette Davis herself found Lee Remick’s performance astonishing and thought that if anyone would stop her from getting that third Oscar, it would be her. Personally, I could easily imagine that, even if most people today seem to narrow the race down to her more well-known co-nominees, she was an important part of the race.

Katharine Hepburn was the sole nomination for her movie that is not the kind of movie that many Academy members were likely to watch in the first place (similar to Rosalind Russell and Mourning Becomes Electra) and there was not yet a strong desire to award her with a second Oscar. And let’s be honest: no matter what Bette Davis said in all those talk-shows later or what Feud might imply, I just don’t see Academy members embracing her work in Whatever happened to Baby Jane? and awarding her with a third Oscar. Yes, Whatever happened to Baby Jane? did receive multiple nominations and even won an Oscar for Costume Design, but the Academy is less afraid to award movies like this on a technical level (for comparisons, see many of the winners for Best Make-Up) – giving it an acting award however, especially when the performer in question already has 2 Oscars at home, is an entirely different matter. Not even Agnes Mooreheard could win a Supporting Oscar two years later for a similar movie and she was considered overdue for her first win at this point. So, I personally think that Bette was rather fourth in this race and not as close to the win as she often liked to say and should have been happy that the Academy actually nominated her. In my eyes, the race actually came down to Anne Bancroft, Geraldine Page – and Lee Remick. Anne Bancroft’s win is not really that surprising – she plays the only nominee in this line-up who is not addicted to alcohol or drugs and instead feels rather heroic in her determination to teach blind and deaf Helen Keller to understand the world around her. Of course, besides this, she also delivered a top-notch performance and the physicality of her role was surely considered a revelation at its time (both Anne Bancroft and Bette Davis appeared on What’s my Line? before the Oscars and while you can see that everyone loves Bette for who she is, everyone is clearly in awe of Anne Bancroft’s performance). I also think that Geraldine Page was a strong factor in the race – she had the Broadway prestige, the Tennessee Williams prestige, the loss a year before and Sweet Bird of Youth was probably also seen as a strong movie adaptation (that also won an award for Supporting Actor). And Lee Remick? I think that hers might have been a popular performance with voters as well because she was the only “addict” nominee whose downfall was presented as a heart-breaking development – her addicted co-nominees also suffer, but they are also sometimes appalling and are suffering from their addictions right from the start. In the case of Lee Remick, the viewer feels much more sympathy for her suffering as she starts the movie as a young, innocent woman and she also never actively decided to become an alcoholic but rather is pushed along this ride by her husband. All this makes it very easy to feel for her and I can see a lot of Academy voters reacting positively to this transformation. Of course, in the end, it’s all pure speculation…so what about Lee Remick’s actual performance?

Thankfully I can say that this performance already shows the strength of the 1962 line-up since even the least talked-about nominee of this group delivers a very strong and beautiful performance. But this shouldn’t come as a surprise – Lee Remick was a very unaffected and instinctive screen actress to whom a lot of often difficult acting jobs came very naturally, something that is especially important in many key scenes of Days of Wine and Roses. As I said above, this is also a very heart-breaking performance of a very innocent character – something that provides Lee Remick with her strongest moments but also prevents her from going further up in my ranking as the part often holds her back or puts her in a too passive role as she too rarely gets to shape her own fate.

Days of Wine and Roses is famously based on a TV movie starring Cliff Robertson (whose anger over being rejected for the movie version caused him to make sure that the same thing wouldn’t happen again with his role in The Two Worlds of Charlie Gordon which would be turned into Charly and win him an Oscar later) and Piper Laurie, a much more aggressive and dominant actress than Lee Remick. The casting of Jack Lemmon obviously caused some changes in the production – apparently, many audience members walked out of Days of Wine and Roses in 1962 as they expected a typical Jack Lemmon comedy. And for a while, they would be right – the movie builds its tragedy step by step. The beginning appears like a typical “Will they, won’t they?” romantic comedy where Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick meet, encounter an error of identities, dislike each other before they inevitable fall in love and get married. Jack Lemmon also uses the beginning of the story for some of his trademark goofy humour and it’s easy to see why audience might have been shocked when the story suddenly turns from what seems like a funny drinking game into a tale of two people losing control of their very existence.  

It has to be said that the changes coming with the casting of Jack Lemmon actually make the story more devastating than before – the TV version starts right away at a very low level for both Joe and Kirsten while the movie takes it time and shows them first as a happy couple, making their downfall even more disturbing. But the biggest change between TV and movie version of Days of Wine and Roses actually came in regards to the character of Kirsten – and these changes made her both more memorable and less interesting at the same time. In the TV version, Kirsten is already the same kind of drunk as Joe – they meet at an office party and form a tragic bond while they accompany their growing alcoholism, each one constantly taking the other one step further. In the movie version, Kirsten is anything but an alcoholic – she actually makes it a point that she dislikes alcohol and doesn’t see the point in it. The movie (clumsily) explains that Kirsten suffers from an addictive personality (apparently shown by her “addiction” to chocolate) that later causes her to become an alcoholic once she tasted a sweet Brandy Alexander. This downfall and contrast obviously benefits Lee Remick – she has a very “All American Girl” personality that makes her an innocent and fresh-faced young woman that contrasts very sharply with her later scenes of drunken despair. But this change from TV to movie screen also caused Kirsten to become a person that is too easily pushed around by others and lacks too much energy – she doesn’t like alcohol until Joe makes her taste it, she likes it then but stops after she had a baby until Joe gets upset with her and wants her to drink with him again which she does until he wants to stop, so she stops with him until he has a relapse and starts drinking again which she then does as well…until at the end when he again wants to stop, only this time she will not join him anymore. This constant “following” makes Kirsten the classic supportive wife (only in this case in the worst of meanings) and again, it does make her downfall very memorable but also provides her from being a stronger or more interesting presence – Piper Laurie obviously took every chance to step into the foreground and the fact that Kirsten was constantly her own person helped her to achieve a different kind of impact than Lee Remick. Today, the actress playing Kirsten would most likely enter the Supporting category – don’t get me wrong, this would surely be category fraud but it is still a limited co-lead part that also suffers from the fact that Jack Lemmon gets the clear central role with much more dramatic opportunities.

But the limits of the part itself are thankfully the only problems that Lee Remick faces as her performance within these limits is a beautiful, strong and disturbing portrayal that certainly gets everything out the role. What’s surprising right from the start is how strong her Kirsten rejects Joe at the beginning. He meets her first when he thinks she is one of the party girls he hired for a party when she is actually his bosses secretary and she immediately takes a strong disliking to him – Lee Remick plays this without any softening of her character and when she later slaps him, it again feels surprisingly serious, considering the rather light touch that the movie and Jack Lemmon had built up to that point. However, this seriousness also does harm her performance in a way when Kirsten suddenly has a change of mind and decides to go out with Joe – so far, their dislike of one another had been so convincing that this change does not feel entirely true; however, after that scene, their chemistry much improves and lays the basis for the story to follow.

Lee Remick possesses a very expressive face and eyes that can easily tell very precise stories – when she mentions her father, he eyes show for a short moment the panic in her, the desire to be accepted, the pretending that she does to herself, before she goes back to being a sweet conversation partner. She also has a very melancholic personality that shimmers just underneath that sweetness and innocence that helps to make scenes such as Joe and Kirsten sharing an evening by the waterfront, talking about her parents or a dream about her own death, very noteworthy and in wonderful harmony with the goal of her personal journey. As I said earlier, Lee Remick is also a very natural actress who can express a vast area of different emotions– she can have a totally believable laughing fit when her neighbours come by to complain about the fact that she is spraying poison against the roaches in her apartment or when she is drunk and has to hide it from her father, she can show the sadness from her father’s disapproval or the pain from Joe telling her that she will ruin her shape by breast-feeding her child and of course the drunken helplessness without any artificiality.  

In a certain way, another criticism that one might have of this performance is that Lee Remick doesn’t do anything with the part that most other actresses couldn’t do as well. This is true to a certain extent – Lee Remick doesn’t surprise with her performance but she does add her own personality and she does get out of it what’s humanly possible. Because it might not be possible to do exactly more with this role – but a look at the TV version shows that it’s definitely possible to do less. Piper Laurie was obviously a talented stage actress but her tics and method approach to this part often makes her performance, especially in her drunk scenes, too forced and affected. Her delivery of the line “Can’t you hear a woman calling you?” is done far too aggressive while Lee Remick captures all of the anger, exhaustion and desperation that Kirsten is feeling. Her big drunk scene in a shabby hotel room is clearly Lee Remick’s big “Oscar scene” – and it’s impossible to not feel for Kirsten in this moment as Lee Remick manages to be completely believable as a drunk, never overdoing it but also not ignoring any of the effects that alcohol has on Kirsten. It’s a deeply disturbing scene that might be her “big” moment but, for my money, Lee Remick is even better in her final scene when a sober Kirsten begs Joe to let her come back and live with him and their daughter again while being unable to promise that she will stop drinking. Her face feels so different from the woman at the beginning of the movie and she wonderfully shows how Kirsten is unwilling to stop drinking while refusing to be called an “alcoholic” and finally admits that she rather continues to drink than be with her family. It’s the only time in the movie that Kirsten makes a decision for herself...

So, this is certainly a heart-breaking and beautifully executed performance that worked wonderfully within the movie and in relation to Jack Lemmon. Lee Remick unfortunately too often had to step back as Jack Lemmon dominated the story but she nonetheless left a lasting impression, thanks to her natural and memorable personality that made the journey of Kirsten equally devastating and upsetting.