Best Supporting Actress 1994

[Hustler]

My vote goes to Dianne Wiest, a briliant actress

[Reza]

I would have never thought to find so much disdain for Mirren´s performance here! In my humble opinion she was brilliant, my definitive runner-up and for my money she would have been a very deserving winner (never heard of her mentioned TV series).

Don't think anyone disdained Mirren's performance in the film. She is good (as always).....it's just that most of us were surprised she got in considering there were better performances that got left out.

It is true she was very much in the news at the time because of her sensational performance in the Prime Suspect tv series which is why she managed to get the nomination here. You must watch the series of Prime Suspect films she appeared in. She is wonderful in all seven films.

[HarryGoldfarb]

I would have never thought to find so much disdain for Mirren´s performance here! In my humble opinion she was brilliant, my definitive runner-up and for my money she would have been a very deserving winner (never heard of her mentioned TV series).

Tom & Viv was a film I enjoyed a lot and Harris was marvelous in it. A totally deserved nod.

Then there are the two ladies from BOB. Tilly... even though her character was annoying, I find her performance quite bland. She's not a scene stealer by any means. Maybe that was some kind of achievement. And Wiest was great; but "average" great... I loved her lines (the martinis scene specially) but I always felt the magic of her performance was more about the dialogue, the lines Allen created, than in her own work as an actress. She was way way better in HAHS.

So my vote goes to Mia Wallace. I loved her back then and I can enjoy her scenes time after time after time. Thurman might not be a very versatile actress but she was definitive a great discovery here. ASnd also Mia ain't a character that complex but she just took it and put some added energ to ity, an extra thing that is hard for me to explain to the written part and created one of the most iconic characters from the 90's.

[Reza]

Voted for Wiest by default........yes she’s the best of this bunch. However, I prefer three other performances to hers which were not nominated.

I like Thurman's performance but Tilly is unbearably shrill. Mirren and Harris got in, I suppose, for the reasons mentioned below.

My top 5 of 1994:

Kristin Scott Thomas, Four Weddings and a Funeral
Virna Lisi, Queen Margot
Glynis Johns, The Ref
Dianne Wiest, Bullets Over Broadway
Uma Thurman, Pulp Fiction

[Eric]

Voted with you, Tee, for Thurman, who indeed has never been remotely as interesting an actress as she was here.

At the same time, tho, I'm at odds with you, Tee, on the overall worth of Bullets Over Broadway. Though it admittedly ushered in an era of eager-to-please pastiche for Allen (a trend that has yet to end though returns have diminished to such an extent it would be better for him to hang it up altogether), I think the enthusiasm was just as much about the fact that he'd written a legitimately humorous script with a bunch of juicy lines for his ensemble cast. Only the fact that I threw a Quixotic vote toward Wiest in the '89 race has me not concerned about snubbing her worthy turn this year.



Edited By Eric on 1288749306

[FilmFan720]

I finally caught up with The Madness of King George, so I can vote in here.

Jennifer Tilly is fine in Bullets Over Broadway, but is nowhere near Award worthy. Helen Mirren is solid in The Madness of King George (as always), but there isn't a whole lot for the character to do and the performance isn't memorable enough to really warrant a nomination.

Rosemary Harris is very good in Tom & Viv, a film I remember liking quite a bit (for the genre). A nomination is warranted, both as a tribute to a fine actress and for the performance. Uma Thurman is iconic in Pulp Fiction, and this is the best performance she has ever given. She is sexy, smart, funny and wicked, and a very good runner-up.

But this category belongs, once again, to Dianne Weist. I have nothing new to add to the discussion...everyone else has put it into words already. The runners-up have also been mentioned already (Wright, Lisi, Scott Thomas), but I will throw in a performance I really like that noone else seems to: Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Hudsucker Proxy.

[Damien]

Dianne Wiest's performances is one of the funniest things I've ever seen on film, just as Jennifer Tilly's is one of the most grating (and one of the worst nominees ever).

I have never figured out Helen Mirren's nomination - she does absolutely nothing in the film. It was probably a goodwill gesture for that detective series she did.

Rosemary Harris -- perfectly fine.

Uma Thurman is terrific and iconic in Pulp Fiction, but it would be wrong to demean and tarnish the Academy Awards by giving an Oscar to such an unmittigated slut, whose carnal desires come before husband and family.

I enthusiastically vote for Weist, an actress I han't cared for previously.

My Own Top 5:
1. Diane Wiest in Bullets Over Broadway
2. Glenn Close in The House Of The Spirits
3. Glynis Johns in The Ref
4. Tracey Ullman in Bullets Over Broadway
5. T. Wendy McMillan in Go Fish



Edited By Damien on 1288738342

[Uri]

Wiest was supposed to be a fake – that was the (obvious) point of her character. That film was all about people pretending to be grander than what they really were in front of other likewise people who were willing to go along with them for the sake of keeping their own fabrication intact. The problem was that Allen himself seemed to be a fake artist by that time, that although it looked rather pretty, there was something almost juvenile about Bullets. Certainly Tilly's performance was. But Wiest was entertaining and looking at this list, there isn't really another one I can go with, so she gets my vote too.

I don't feel I really know the actress that Harris is. I only saw her in small roles – she's always a sympathetic presence, as she's here, and one can definitely get there's a lot more there, she seems to always show a certain smile which suggests she knows better. She should have a better chance to showcase her abilities, but as fine as she was in Tom and Viv, it was not the case. Mirren was fine as the dotting, petit bourgeois Queen, and it was nice she was finely noticed, but it was way too minor for a win. And Thurman was iconic in Pulp Fiction, which is a nice way to say she was very effectively exhibited and not particularly manifesting any kind of profound complexity – OK, none of the other was, but still, at that point I didn't find her to be worthy of an Oscar.

I usually find myself defending Forrest Gump, but I'm not going to herald any of its ladies. Field was well into her pocket-lioness-fighting-for-her-cubs phase. By that time it was such an efficient shtick it actually worked within the (too) slightly grotesque film surrounding her. And this is exactly why Wright earnest turn was actually quite misplaced.

I would have liked to see Jessica Tandy on the list for her lovely last performance in the lovely Nobody's Fool, and even more so Kristin Scott Thomas, who managed to wryly comment on class, matrimony, love, gender roles in a very elegantly understated way in Four Weddings and a Funeral. I would have gladly vote for her if I could.



Edited By Uri on 1288732989

[Sabin]

Did anyone think that Susan Sarandon would get in for Little Women? And how assured was her nomination for The Client?

[Mister Tee]

This voting is going about as I expected. The group here, just like the critics, baffle me with their overwhelming love for what I view as one of Dianne Wiest's least impressive performances. I love Wiest in general, but I'm with Italiano: this seemed an actress without the diva gene trying to affect one. I don't think she's horrible or anything, but I find it minor-league stuff, and could never comprehend the unanimous support she received.

Not that anyone else was great, either, nor were any of the overlooked alternatives noteworthy. I didn't get the Robin Wright groundswell, either (apart from her being in a hugely successful film). If I had to pick substitutes, I guess I'd have gone with Kirsten Dunst, or Trini Alvarado in Little Women.

The announcements of both Mirren and Tilly were greeted with surprise approximating that given Tomei two years earlier. Mirren almost surely benefitted from the huge popularity of Prime Suspect, and from the fact taht Madness of King George was a sleeper that appealed to the Masterpiece Theatre wing of AMPAS. (Today, you wonder if the film would have had time to gain that support. It had been untterly unheralded before its late December opening, and might not have been able to break through the established narrative) I admire alot of what Mirren's done in her career, but I found ths performance utterly undistinguished.

Tilly got carried along by the unexpected Bullets over Broadway wave, successfully engineered by the Weinsteins as a sort of "Let's forgive Woody" campaign (Allen's directing nomination also came out of the blue). I found Bullets a very lightweight, forgettable Woody, so the scandal and aftermath seemed to me to create a double injustice: underrrating the fine Husbands and Wives, overrating Bullets. Tilly was, as usual, shrill, and hardly worthy of the vote.

Rosemary Harris' part was so small that you knew a significant scene had to be coming, which it did, near the end. Surprisingly, it was not a barn-burner, but a beautifully subtle shiv into Eliot's gut. Nice work, and worthy of the nod in this light year.

But I end up going with Uma Thurman, who I never particularly liked before or since, but who had the most interestingly full character of this group. As I suggested earlier, an unenthusiastic vote -- I'd much rather vote for my runner-up of '95 than my winner this year. But, as they say, the least ugly child is the family beauty. So, Uma Thurman it is.

[Big Magilla]

Also, you wrote MEG Tilly.

Arghhh! I wish I could fix these damn errors in the polls, but I can't.

[mlrg]

Dianne Wiest - Bullets Over Broadway

[ITALIANO]

Dianne Wiest will triumph here as she did back then - and I realize that, especially considering the most recent winners in this category, one shouldn't complain too much. Yet I wasn't that impressed by her performance in Bullets over Broadway - a nice Woody Allen movie which was, for some reason, very popular when it came out, and still is, I think, his most-nominated movie along with Hannah and Her Sisters. Hannah is much better though; this one, while not exactly forgettable of course, is pleasant but minor. As for Wiest. Flamboyant is something that must come from inside - it's not just a question of wide gestures and excessive behavior. One can copy that - and this is what Wiest, a very good actress, did - but you feel it when it doesn't ring true. And I'm not just referring to Bette Davis, Gloria Swanson or Rosalind Russell - women who were famously like that; even if, for example, you don't know anything about Valentina Cortese's life and work, when you see her in Day for Night you perfectly understand that she's the "real thing", that she's emotionally right for the role. In Wiest's case it's just an acceptable imitation; she's basically this low-key New York actress who for once plays larger-than-life. The result isn't a failure - just not Oscar-worthy.

Even Jennifer Tilly is better in the same movie.

There were, as always, some very good performances that were ignored by the Academy, and that others have mentioned in their posts. I'm not crazy about the Forrest Gump ladies - certainly not about Sally Field, but I know that Americans love her - but it's true that for example Virna Lisi's definitive portrayal of sick, neurotic political power should have been nominated.

But the three other nominees hadnt been bad. Mirren took here the first step towards the Oscar she would finally receive years later; it may not be her most famous performance, but at the time it was praised enough to make her win, somehow surprisingly, Best Actress at Cannes (Lisi had won the year before).

Uma Thurman is an actress I like but who is, I think, too edgy for the Academy, too unconventional, so I can only be glad that she got at least this one nomination in her interesting career. Tarantino used her brilliantly in Pulp Fiction and would use her even more brilliantly a few years later.

I could vote for her, but I will make, I know, a strange choice by picking Rosemary Harris in Tom and Viv. Harris is a great actress, though probably one that never really got from the movies the roles she deserved. And it's not like her role in this admittedly forgotten film is that good - but the way she plays it, especially in one well-written scene when she subtly, and with typical British reserve, still openly says to Willem Dafoe that she's seen his true face and doesnt like it, is masterful.



Edited By ITALIANO on 1288728137

[Kova]

I don't remember much about Harris in Tom & Viv, other than thinking she was solid--nothing spectacular. She at least had the NBR win, so this inclusion wasn't exactly shocking.

My assumption is that Mirren was swept in by 2 factors: 1) good will over her highly buzzed work in the Prime Suspect films, as Magilla mentioned, and 2) late-in-the-season enthusiasm for her film (judging from its mild upset in the Art Direction category, my guess is that older voters swooned over it). As in the case of Harris, I don't remember that much about her work here.

Tilly really came out of nowhere. Miramax, no doubt, campaigned the crap out of Bullets (I recall being equally stunned by Woody Allen's directing nod), and it really paid off in a field that had no locks beyond Thurman and Wiest. Tilly is amusing, but there isn't much meat to this role.

Thurman certainly makes an indelible impression in Pulp Fiction (I still see Mia Wallace Halloween costumes on occasion), but much of the creative work in this case was performed by Tarantino. Wiest gets my vote for her comic tour de force.

[Precious Doll]

Can't say I care for any of the non Bullets over Broadway ladies. Harris & Mirren had little to do and Thurman was simply one note and annoying. There was a wealth of terrific work by women in supporting roles during 1994, however a number of the films were not eligible for award consideration.

My choices were:

1. Dianne Wiest for Bullets over Broadway
2. Rachel Griffiths for Muriel's Wedding
3. Jamie Lee Curtis for True Lies
4. Mink Stole for Serial Mom
5. Jeannie Dryden for Muriel's Wedding

Also notable were Christine Baranski in The Ref, Amanda Douge for That Eye, The Sky, Pamela Hunt in Ladybird, Ladybird, Virna Lisi in Queen Margot, Ghita Norby in The Kingdom, Lena Olin in Romeo is Dead, Kirsten Rolffes in The Kingdom and Jennifer Tilly for Bullets over Broadway & The Getaway.



Edited By Precious Doll on 1288682152