Best Supporting Actress 2010

[ksrymy]

So can we safely assume that Helena Bonham Carter is winning this poll?

Yes. The votes would be 6-7-1-6-6.

[Reza]

So can we safely assume that Helena Bonham Carter is winning this poll?

[mayukh]

I voted for Helena Bonham-Carter. Her quick, snappy presence completely changes the rhythm of the whole film, and I always enjoy watching such an intelligent actress as herself navigate such "safe" territory as this (similar to Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton). She reacts to other actors in a way that is believable and surprising.

I really wanted to like Amy Adams in The Fighter, but all I saw was an actress unsuccessfully trying to get out of her comfort zone. She's totally unconvincing – the technique just isn't there, even if her performance has a lot of "heart".

Melissa Leo has a lot of energy in The Fighter. I don't particularly like her (especially not two years before this), but I don't see the hamola others see, either. Her approach here is effective.

bizarre is spot-on with Weaver – her nod is refreshing, but, now that it's been two years, I think it's safe to admit that she was pretty good, not spectacular in Animal Kingdom. She's a creepy and odd presence, but I never really bought that she was playing a genuinely malicious person (which could be interesting, but she doesn't to me really suggest where this comes from).

Hailee Steinfeld was very likable, but I didn't come out of True Grit thinking, "wow, there's a career there" – I just saw a girl who was well-cast and well-used by two filmmakers with occasional bits of her inexperience peeking through.

Mila Kunis' candidacy is one I couldn't really get behind – her characterization seemed incomplete and unintentionally ambiguous. Barbara Hershey, though, was spectacular – over-the-top, fearless, and moving. Lesley Manville was like Gena Rowlands – all affect with little soul.

[LoganJ20]

Jacki Weaver was amazing and was definitely the underdog of 2010. She came from this little movie in Australia and earned herself an Oscar nomination. Unfortunately, the Academy has to go and vote for the popular vote and totally overlook real talent.

[ksrymy]

And we have secret, non-commnted-on ballot-stuffing for Jacki Weaver.

There's no way to delete votes is there?

[bizarre]

I haven't seen very much from this year. As a result my lineup is pretty anglocentric but I think it is still very strong:

1. Lesley Manville / Another Year
2. Amanda Peet / Please Give
3. Kirsten Dunst / All Good Things
4. Mila Kunis / Black Swan
5. Olivia Williams / The Ghost Writer

I've only seen Weaver from the lineup. And while it is very cool that an actress like this (!) in a film like this (!) from a country like that (!) got nominated, I think that the character itself (evil granny) did most of the work for her, both 'in film' and 'in campaign'. She has some strong moments ("I hope you catch the real killers" #1, the end) but others, like the supermarket scene, are overplayed. Still I'm very happy that an older, unknown Australian actress with unique features was nominated for a small-budget Australian genre film that didn't make huge BO in the States, and I'm interested in seeing what the nomination will do for Ms. Weaver's career.

[Jim20]

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
**Amy Adams, The Fighter**
Marion Cotillard, Inception
Melissa Leo, The Fighter
Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom
Olivia Williams, The Ghost Writer

[Damien]

The winner was the worst of the nominees. Melissa Leo is such a mannered actress. You can always see the wheels turning, you're always aware that she's ACTING, trying to come up with little bits of business that don't have the effect of enhancing her characters but just the opposite -- they call attention to her acting. I can't stand her, and while The Fighter is a film overflowing with wonderful performances, she merely stunk up the joint. (It has no bearing on the quality of her acting, but I also have it on good authority that she’s a complete pain in the ass to work for, as she’s the embodiment of the old parody of Method actors who are looking for their motivation in trying to find the essence of their character. When she was on one of the Law & Order shows as a regular, the writing staff supposedly was given an edict to keep her scenes to a minimum, because even with a scene of a few lines, she would hold up shooting for an hour. Locked in her trailer trying to locate her character.)

I'm not sure why Jacki Warner received a nomination; she's perfectly fine, but has no big moment, and the contrast between her demure exterior and steely inner resolve is a bit too pronounced. The truly memorable performance in the picture belongs to Ben Mendelsohn, one of the scariest villains ever. Dispassionate and poker-faced, he is so coldly calculated as to make Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men seem like Elmer Fudd.

Not only was Hailee Steinfeld egregiously in the wrong category, her one-note performance got very tedious.

But the other two nominees, I wish I could split the Oscar in two. Or better yet, take the Best Actress statuette which none of those nominees deserved and have an Oscar to give to each of Helena Bonham-Carter and Amy Adams

How is it possible that this tough-talking bar girl is the same woman who recently had played a fairy tale princess and a naïve nun? As opposed to Melissa Leo, Amy Adams IS her character and it’s quite something to behold. A superb performance.

But I would give a very slight edge to Helena Bonham Carter. This is partially because she is as emotionally affecting as Adams in a much less showy role and her lovely performance really provides The King’s Speech with grounding between the two main male characters. Also, one way that Bonham-Carter’s work is so effective is that her warmth flows to the man she loves and makes us perceive his positive characteristics.

Both Adams and Bonham-Carter gave Oscar-caliber performances, but I’m voting for the latter.

My Own Top Five:
1. Olivia Williams In The Ghost Writer
2. Maria Paiato in I Am Love
3. Rooney Mara in The Social Network
4. Helena Bonham Carter in The King’s Speech
5. Amy Adams in The Fighter

[Sabin]

I have no issue whatsoever with Alice Ward being an abrasive personality. Pretty much everyone in the film has a somewhat abrasive personality. But I found nothing beneath it, no humanity, no nuance, no history. Nothing. She doesn't derail the film by any means, but I found nothing exceptional about her performance. She certainly didn't bring anything that helped me understand this character as a human like so many of the other talented performers in the film did.

Yes, she is an obnoxious performer playing an obnoxious person obnoxiously, but I don't think that verisimilitude is any more a credit to her performance than Geoffrey Rush's is to David Helfgott.

[OscarGuy]

One thing that bothers me about people's critique of Melissa Leo in The Fighter saying she's abrasive or phony (to borrow Sabin's specific words) is that she's playing a character based on a real person and from all the reports I've read, she pretty much nails Alice Ward even toning it down some against the real woman. Now, I'll say that I cannot account for the veracity of these claims and it may well be because of a well oiled publicity machine. However, if this is true, then she does a terrific job with the role. I wouldn't have voted for her personally, but I don't begrudge her win. I think Hailee Steinfeld in this line up is unquestionably the best (though hers is a lead performance if I've ever seen it). I also think Keira Knightley does fine work in Never Let Me Go.

[Sabin]

The single worst nominated performance of 2010 was Melissa Leo in The Fighter. Just an abrasive, phony piece of work. I remember watching 21 Grams and thinking "This is a great actress who takes chances and who is destined to be overlooked for her career." How wrong I wish I was! Her work in Frozen River isn't as prime an offender, but her mother in The Fighter is a litany of po' affectations strung together obnoxiously. She's an annoying woman playing an annoying woman annoyingly. Someone like Dale Dickey or Margo Martindale could have done wonders. Melissa Leo looks like she's waiting for a charter plane.

Amy Adams is my runner up choice in the same film, which has a lot of welcome energy in its margins that heightens the production. There isn't much in The Fighter that is exceptional in its text, but David O. Russell does some wonders. Amy Adams is a wonderful actress who has had a much better career than one might have suspected. Count me in as a big fan of Junebug, and her work in Doubt grew on me. That she manages to maintain a degree of individuality in The Fighter is testament to her pluck. I dig her here, and I wish there was more between her and Wahlberg.

Helena Bonham Carter does a nice job with what she has, and before anybody saw The King's Speech I thought it was hers to lose. But there's not much for her to do. She's good, but it's hard to really give it to her. Likewise, I'm glad that Jacki Weaver got a nomination but it's really just the role. She has an incredible couple of scenes that she plays very nicely, but it's just the nature of the role. Animal Kingdom is a pretty forgettable film, but I must give her credit for being memorable.

I give this one to Hailee Steinfeld even though she is the lead. She's a child actor, so it's a little more forgivable, I think. I wasn't aware I was watching a performance on any level, and the actress they found to play her earlier in the film only adds weight to her role. True Grit is pretty overrated, I think, but Steinfeld to me is one of the most genuine figures in the Coens' oeuvre.

My Choices
1. Olivia Williams, The Ghost Writer
2. Dianne Wiest, Rabbit Hole
3. Dale Dickey, Winter's Bone
4. Lesley Manville, Another Year
5. Ellen Wong, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

[The Original BJ]

As in Best Actress 2010, I'm a little surprised to see this field so berated -- I think it's a pretty good lineup.

As far as replacements go, Lesley Manville is a bit of a lead/support litmus test -- she's SO dominant throughout Another Year that you could easily make a case she's a lead. But she's also absent from good chunks of the movie, and not really its narrative focus, so you could also argue she's a supporting actress. Either way, a wonderful performance. I also thought Keira Knightley -- an actress I've never remotely cared for -- was surprisingly spot-on in a tricky role in Never Let Me Go.

Helena Bonham Carter had some delightful lines in The King's Speech ("I don't have a hubby, we don't pop..."), but her character was mostly an adjunct to the narrative. It was nice to see her in a real movie again, after mostly a decade of Harry Potter/Tim Burton coasting, but I never understood the individual raves from some quarters. I didn't think she had much of a part.

On the OTHER end of the spectrum, Hailee Steinfeld is one of the more egregious cases of category fraud we've seen this decade. But she was memorable in True Grit, possessing a sharp, spunky presence, and a keen sense of intelligence (here I'm referring to both character and actress). The performance did feel somewhat directed to me -- though it was certainly WELL-directed -- and wasn't quite up to the level of a Patty Duke or Anna Paquin tour-de-force, my personal barometer for evaluating whether or not an unproven child actor deserves an Oscar.

I think both Fighter women are absolutely excellent. As Mister Tee says, Amy Adams deserves credit for her change of pace role, but she deserves even MORE credit for so effortlessly abandoning the more innocent side of her persona and slipping so easily into this more hardened character. That porch scene with Christian Bale ("I drank too much...I wasted a lot of opportunities") is a great moment. And Melissa Leo is equally wonderful -- her character was brassy and annoying, but realistically so, and the actress offsets these less appealing aspects of the character by showing us that, deep down, Alice Ward does operate out of love for her children. (She also provided us with my favorite new insult: "You're an MTV girl.")

But though I was perfectly thrilled with Melissa Leo's win, I voted for Jacki Weaver, who I was so thrilled made it onto the list at all. True, her role isn't so dominant in the early portion of Animal Kingdom, but she uses these scenes to foreshadow her character's monstrous behavior near the film's end. (The way she kisses her sons on the lips, while delicately tossing off her favorite phrase of affection -- "sweetie" -- is so creepy, it isn't remotely surprising she eventually becomes Very Bad News.) I saw Animal Kingdom on opening day, before Weaver had much buzz, and I can remember the moment in the film's final reel -- when Smurf really takes her family's situation into her own hands -- when I started to think, this woman is terrific, SHE should be Oscar-nominated. It may be that "discovery" factor that makes me feel more personally attached to her, and so I choose her by a hair over the Fighter women.

[Mister Tee]

Maybe it's the fact that this is all so recent that makes me feel like we've already been over everything. I'm not surprised by the (so-far) split in opinion, nor by the fact that so many are advocating for the omittees I myself prefer to the nominees -- Olivia Williams and Dianne Wiest.

I don't dislike any of the contenders, though I'll grant Melissa Leo pushes the boundaries a bit. She seems permanently on the edge of too-much, but I think she mostly keeps herself from tumbling over. However, I can't understand why she became such an unstoppable favorite in the latter stages of the race.

Helena Bonham Carter is typically wonderful in the first half of The King's Speech, but then disappears for most of the remainder of the film. Had she had more screen time, she might have had my vote.

Screen time obviously isn't an issue for Hailee Steinfeld -- apart from marking her as a clear ringer in the race. Steinfeld obviously does her job in largely carrying the film, but for me this is a clear case of "I need to see if you can do anything else".

Jacki Weaver spends most of Anmal Kingdom lying in wait -- for the first 80 minutes or so she's a hovering presence, but she only has one strong scene, discussing her estranging fight with her daughter ("She was drunk...I was drunk, too -- but I was RIGHT"). But in the last 15 minutes or so she strikes like a cobra -- utterly taking the film by the reins. She's a strong contender.

But I remain a major softy for Amy Adams, and once again I have to salute her for this remarkable change of pace. As I said back last December, the amazement is not that Adams plays a character way out of her type range -- Shirley Jones did that in Elmer Gantry, and I wasn't impressed. It's that she so seamlessly steps into this different sort of character, making her a presence that would have been memorable even if played by someone more obvious (say, a Marisa Tomei). Everyone seem to think Adams is a cinch to win a Oscar some day, and I certainly hope so -- by me she's at least been in the discussion all three times she's been nominated. But think this may be her finest work to date, and she gets my vote here.

[FilmFan720]

Amy Adams is the only one of these I would have nominated, and she gets my vote here. This is the moment where I saw he shift from a great movie premise to a real actress, as she didn't rely on her cuteness or her charisma and pushed herself out of her own comfort zone. On top of that, it is a very strong performance in its own right, the only performer in the film who really works.

Melissa Leo overacts horribly, Helena Bonham Carter doesn't have nearly enough to do (although I did love her villain in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 that year, and would have been open to a citation for her for that fight scene with Emma Watson alone) and I never got what Jacki Weaver did that was so phenomenal. Hailee Steinfeld is very good.

The thing is, it isn't like this category couldn't have been populated with great work: Olivia Williams in The Ghost Writer, Dale Dickey in Winter's Bone and Dianne Weist in Rabbit Hole.

[Big Magilla]

This one of those "none of the above" years for me. My choice would have been Vanessa Redgrave in Letters to Juliet had she been nominated - a lovely performance by a lovely actress in a lovely setting - but, alas, she is not among the nominees. My second choice would be Kristin Scott Thomas as John Lennon's aunt in Nowhere to Go, another lovely performance by a lovely actress, albeit in a less lovely setting.

First to go - Hailee Steinfeld in True Grit. Yes, it's a a lead role, and it's a good performance, but for me it pales in comparison to Kim Darby's career high performanc in the original.

Second to go - Jacki Weaver in Animal Kingdom. Maybe it was the character rather than the actress, but I just didn't like her.

The remaining three were nomination worthy IMO but not really award worthy.

Melissa Leo was good, but didn't do anything most competent actresses couldn't do with a big hair wig, a Boston accent and a propensity for yelling. That she dominated the year-end voitng is still a head-scratcher for me.

It's a difficult choice, then, between Amy Adams, a young actress who keeps getting better and should some day hit the bullseye with a surefire Oscar winning performance, and Helena Bonham Carter, an actress of tremendous range who should have won an Oscar for The Wings of the Dove or Margaret's Museum more than a decade earlier. She gets my default vote.