Best Actress '97 was one of those where everyone won something. Julie Christie and Helena Bonham-Carter won critics' prizes, Helen Hunt and Judi Dench won Golden Globes, and Kate Winslet won the box office. If you were around in the late 90s, though, you may recall how unstoppable Helen Hunt was. She was the star of the TV hit Mad About You, for which she won four consecutive Emmys, 1996-99, and of the 1996 film, Twister. TV and movie stardom - isn't an Oscar the logical next step?
The nominees, ranked by me:
5. Julie Christie as Phyllis Mann
Afterglow
past winner, third of four nominations; NYFCC Awards winner for Best Actress
What is she in here for: her absent look watching her younger self onscreen, her push-pull game of seduction with a younger man, her outburst at the end mourning the absent daughter and the wreck of her marriage? None of it comes together into a coherent character, no matter what poses she strikes.
4. Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater
Titanic
second of seven nominations; Golden Globe nominee for Best Actress in a Drama, SAG Awards nominee for Best Actress
I admit it takes me some time, every time I watch it, to get used to the stylized way she delivers her lines, breathlessly clipped like she's doing a Titanic film made in the 30s or 50s. She's great at it, not just because it's the perfect way to deliver James Cameron's dialogue, but because it does capture a certain memory of self; let us recall, this is Rose as remembered by herself 80 years later. She has to anchor this past and she does it beautifully.
3. Helena Bonham-Carter as Kate Croy
The Wings of the Dove
first of two nominations; LAFCA Awards winner for Best Actress, National Board of Review's Best Actress of 1997; BAFTA Awards nominee for Best Actress, Golden Globe nominee for Best Actress in a Drama, NYFCC Awards runner-up for Best Actress, SAG Awards nominee for Best Actress
Difficult job she has, playing someone who's threading the needle between gold-digging for a greater purpose and actually just preferring the lifestyle and security of the wealthy and connected. Bonham-Carter explores the conflict subtly, we sense her own reluctance to go through with her plan...until she senses she's losing the man she loves. Her last scene is a killer.
2. Helen Hunt as Carol Connelly
As Good As It Gets
first of two nominations; Golden Globe winner for Best Actress in a Musical/Comedy, SAG Awards winner for Best Actress; LAFCA Awards runner-up for Best Actress
She's one of the best to ever do it, frankly, that effortless accent work - working class, very born-and-raised in NYC, not overdoing the vowels, really letting loose with it when yelling things like, "Fucking HMO bastard pieces of shit!" - the intimate way she holds Greg Kinnear's face before planting a kiss - way too intimate for these characters, but she sells it as the action of someone who feels things very deeply and quickly and is letting her guard down for one weekend and, besides, the guy could use a lot of love right now - the time she takes to process Melvin's rudeness and a response to it, her face working between shocked, offended, professionalism, and escape. How could you not fall in love with this woman?
1. Judi Dench as Queen Victoria
Mrs. Brown
first of eight nominations; BAFTA Awards winner for Best Actress, Golden Globe winner for Best Actress in a Drama; NYFCC Awards second runner-up for Best Actress, SAG Awards nominee for Best Actress
Imperious as Queen, obsessively focused on mourning, genuinely surprised at any pushback, then, gradually, girlish in her flirtations with John Brown - he does seem to breathe new life in her, the flush in her cheeks obvious well before her secretary worriedly notices it. Dench does not allow any doubt to creep into Victoria's regal bearing, she is Queen, she is England. Subtle strokes of The Woman allow for a humanity that only Brown (and an ill son) can reach; certainty that she is appointed by God allows for her to so swiftly and easily pass in and out of Brown's life (and dismiss said son's own concerns).
Next time, the nominees for Best Supporting Actress: Kim Basinger (L.A. Confidential), Joan Cusack (In & Out), Minnie Driver (Good Will Hunting), Julianne Moore (Boogie Nights), and Gloria Stuart (Titanic).
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