Best Actress 1991

[reggiema24]

I am a Bette Midler fan. I wanted her to win so badly in 79 for The Rose but then I got to watching Norma Rae and was blown away by Sally Field. Field was right to be chosen. For me this year it was between Laura Dern and Bette Midler but Midler had such an essence to her. So my vote is for her

[mojoe92]

Bette Midler was best out of all the performances here. Such an underrated performance. Blows the competition away

[nightwingnova]

I agree with Pauline Kael here in that Davis and Sarandon should have been allowed to compete as a team. They performed a duet.

[Hustler]

yep. Sarandon was definitely the best that year. She´s magnetic.

[dws1982]

This is a very solid lineup that doesn't really get the credit it deserves. Only Bette Midler in her vanity project didn't have any business on the list. I could see a valid argument for any of the other four as a winner. I like Silence better than Damien, but I do share his dismay that it is constantly built up at the expense of Manhunter.

Went with Sarandon today, but like I said, I think all of the non-Midler four would've been a respectable choice.

My top five:
1- Reese Witherspoon, The Man in the Moon
2- Mimi Rogers, The Rapture
3- Judy Davis, Impromptu
4- Michelle Pfieffer, Frankie and Johnny
5- Susan Sarandon, Thelma and Louise

[Reza]

Voted for Sarandon.

My picks:

Susan Sarandon, Thelma and Louise
Vanessa Redgrave, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
Mimi Rogers, The Rapture
Geena Davis, Thelma and Louise
Jodie Foster, The Silence of the Lambs

[Damien]

Though, Kathy Bates had played the part on stage, nowhere in the script does it say anything about Frankie's attractiveness or lack thereof. Anyway, the entire history of the Academy is to reward, even over-reward beauties for deglamming -- see Sarandon, Theron and Winslet winning in the years after. Why was this splendid Pfeiffer performance the one instance where people got up in arms and blackballed the beauty?

Can you tell I've been stewing on this ever since?

I saw the play in London, where the part was played by Julie Walters, who was sort of halfway between Pfeiffer and Bates. A wonderful performance. (Her co-star was the authentic Hannibal Lechter, Brian Cox, another wonderful performance.) I never did see the movie, mainly because I try to avoid Al Pacino films whenever I can.

[Damien]

Among these five, it was no contest. Laura Dern is the only one who created a believable, multi-dimensional character. I'm sorry this very talented actress didn't become a big star.

I like Bette Midler, so I don't begrudge her her nomination, especially since this was her dream project which was D.O.A. But she essentially did Bette schtick (bawdiness, sentimentality-bordering-on-the-maudlin, victimization, tough broad).

Nor did the two women in Thelma and Louise enact real characters -- the title roles were symbols not people, and the whole thing was just another piece of wretched nonsense from the dire Ridley Scott. The actresses were better than their material, though.

Jodie Foster, perfectly serviceable, disposable, forgettable performance. And I shall be forever pissed that this mediocre movie (and I was a Demme champion since Caged Heat in '74) received the acclaim that had been due Michael Mann's brilliant Manhunter.

My Own Top 5:
1. Ellen Barkin in Switch
2. Reese WItherspoon in The Man In The Moon
3. Mary Stuart Masterson in Fried Green Tomatoes
4. Kerry Fox in An Angel At My Table
5. Vanessa Redgrave in The Ballad Of The Sad Cafe



Edited By Damien on 1261562776

[ITALIANO]

Thelma and Louise is admittedly a good, very well directed and well acted movie, but we'll have time to honor its stars later here or when we do Supporting Actresses.

The Silence of the Lambs is at least as good, and probably even better, and Foster's portrayal of this resourceful, strong yet very human, intelligent and, for once, NOT romantically involved (a refreshing change) heroine is subtle, complex, unshowy and masterfully executed. It's one of the best, most realistic female characters American cinema of the 90s gave us, precisely because the movie sees it as a person even more than as a woman; yet it wouldnt be, I think, so impressive had another, more "flirty" actress played it. Jodie Foster gets, of course, my vote.

The two others? Dern wasn't bad, Midler was, but neither had a real chance of winning, and back then even Sarandon and Davis werent considered to be possible winners. We all knew Foster would have got it, and she deserved it.



Edited By ITALIANO on 1261556392

[Uri]

I'm a little bit surprised – I thought Sarandon will take this one in a landslide. For me, her Louise is probably the greatest performance by an American actress in the '90s. And I think that people rather lazily look at her and Davis as kind of one entity. While Davis is nothing short of brilliant and her Thelma is a comic masterpiece, the character of Louise and the way Sarandon plays her is much more complex so the end result is in a totally different level. T&L is a fascinating film. It's the kind of piece that rather incidentally turned into something much more profound than what people tend to acknowledge, including its makers. It achieved an abstract quality and can be read as a Marxist manifest, as a science fiction like allegory, but certainly it doesn’t operate as a naturalistic depiction of real life and real people. Most of the characters are very well defined caricatures or rather highly stylized representations of human stereotypes whose actions and motivations are almost cartoonishly extreme. And it's all perfectly executed, but what makes T&L such a humanistic and relevant film is the fact that that in the middle of all this there is fully rounded, finely detailed complex human being – Sarandon is the one who gives a grounded, real argumentation to compliment the theoretic themes of T&L. (And Harvey Keitel's warm, subtle turn serves as a lovely component to hers).

Foster would have been a very worthy winner had it not been for Sarandon and Dern is lovely, but not in the same league. Midler's turn can be enjoyed by those of us who like kitschy, at time even trashy camp (when not heavily drowned under patriotic schmaltz), but it should have nothing to do with awards for acting.



Edited By Uri on 1261553766

[Mister Tee]

For me, the performance of the year was Michelle Pfeiffer's in Frankie and Johnny. The movie was an ungainly hybrid -- lovely stuff from McNally's original play standing alongside Garry Marshall sitcom shtik -- but Pfeiffer completely caught the soul of a wounded, working-class woman. She sadly failed to be nominated, because the movie wasn't the commercial success hoped for, but also -- this is still hard to believe -- because there was a bit an outcry someone as beautiful as she should be asked to play the part. Which was bullshit. Though, Kathy Bates had played the part on stage, nowhere in the script does it say anything about Frankie's attractiveness or lack thereof. Anyway, the entire history of the Academy is to reward, even over-reward beauties for deglamming -- see Sarandon, Theron and Winslet winning in the years after. Why was this splendid Pfeiffer performance the one instance where people got up in arms and blackballed the beauty?

Can you tell I've been stewing on this ever since?

It was especially grating that she lost the last spot to Midler, whose movie was ghastly and whose old-age acting in the final scenes was strictly amateur night. For the Boys had also been a bomb, but Midler flogged the hell out of it, and somehow convinced voters it was a worthy little movie that hadn't got its due. Bleccch.

Laura Dern was funny and sexy and likable -- like her movie -- but in a minor way.

I know Silence is peak-ish for Foster, but, as I said under '88, Foster is an Academy enthusiasm I simply don't share.

So, for me, among the nominees it comes down to Thelma and Louise. At the time, I might have opted for Sarandon because Davis already that fresh Tourist Oscar. And Sarandon is certainly good, in the role that really catapulted her into the semi-iconic position she occupies today. But I think Davis is, overall, a better actress (however bad her career choices may have been), and I like her Thelma more than I like Sarandon's Louise. So, trying to be dispassionate for once, I click beside Davis' name.

[mlrg]

Foster

[Sabin]

I haven't seen Bette Midler, nor will I.

I would have lauded Juliette Stevenson for Truly Madly Deeply, Kerry Fox for An Angel at My Table, or Meryl Streep in this category. I like the four that I've seen very much. Jodie Foster and Laura Dern are quite good but for me it's between Thelma & Louise. I go for Sarandon for the difficulty of her performance, for the lifetime of regret she encapsulates, and for driving the plot forward.



Edited By Sabin on 1261528500

[flipp525]

Dern was fine but was outclassed by her real life mother, Diane Ladd, playing her mother.

Diane Ladd doesn't play Laura Dern's mother in Rambling Rose. As the modern-day feminist Mrs. Hillyer, she portrays the wife of Dern's employer in the film.

And I disagree that Dern was "outclassed" by her mother. She succeeds in making the difficult title role her own by allowing her character's weaknesses and vulnerabilities to also be her strengths and virtues. It's a wonderful performance.

Bette Midler in that old-age makeup is a travesty. Yikes. The make-up department deserved a Razzie.

Anthony Hopkin has said that Jodie Foster turned in one of the best pieces of acting he'd ever seen in their first scene together. It is a truly believable performance in a genre-bending film.

It's difficult to break Thelma and Louise up, but I will. I voted for Susan Sarandon. As wonderful as Geena Davis is as the foolhardy Thelma (and she absolutely is), I can easily vote for her in Best Supporting Actress category later on, where she very deservedly won for her performance in The Accidental Tourist over the more heavily-predicted Sigourney Weaver.

Sarandon's Louise fights a balancing act as she slowly lets her character's pain bubble to the surface and become the driving force of her character and the film. It's an astonishing performance.



Edited By flipp525 on 1261532345

[Big Magilla]

I've always been in a bit of a quandary about this one. I voted for Foster only because I didn't want to choose between Sarandon and Davis, both of whom I thought did a better job.

Midler's film pretty much sucks but she's good in it at least as far as I remember - I haven't actually watched it in years.

Dern was fine but was outclassed by her real life mother, Diane Ladd, playing her mother.

My choice for the fifth slot was/is Michelle Pfeiffer in Frankie and Johnny.