I will never forget that photo of Charlize Theron in full Aileen Wuornos drag, clad in a prison jumpsuit with hands clasped while awaiting mercy in a courtroom. It's the picture everyone used to say "this is our next Oscar winner", the picture everyone chose to say "gorgeous women can only win Oscars win they de-glam!" Hell, in 2006, the Academy Awards itself made a joke by saying Charlize Theron was once more "ugging it up" for North Country. If you read "We Predict the Winners" articles from the era, everyone tries to build suspense by saying it's a narrow race between Theron and Diane Keaton in Something's Gotta Give...and everyone predicts Charlize Theron. I was three days from turning 15 and even I knew who'd win:
Who should have won? The performances ranked, by me, from 5th to 1st:
5. Naomi Watts as Cristina Peck
21 Grams
first of two nominations; LAFCA Awards winner for Best Actress; BAFTA Award nominee for Best Actress, NYFCC Awards runner-up for Best Actress, SAG Awards nominee for Best Actress
Watts is a great actress but this misery porn film has her arc cut up and scattered into an assortment of Big Moments. Crying, shouting, getting dangerously drunk and high. Where is the person? She's a caricature defined by tragedy, with little sense of inner life or who she was before - even in flashbacks! At the time, as you see, it was widely hailed, and even Entertainment Weekly said it was a "vote siphoning" threat to Theron's eventual win. Everyone was high in 2003, I guess.
4. Keisha Castle-Hughes as Paikea
Whale Rider
only nomination; SAG Award nominee for Best Supporting Actress
The youngest Best Actress nominee until Quvenzhané Wallis in 2012's Beasts of the Southern Wild. And let's thank Heaven they nominated her in the right category! I believe her performance as the young girl who is the only youth in her village who truly has what it takes to take on the role of chief - that is, I see the strength and sensitivity. Best of the year?
3. Samantha Morton as Sarah
In America
second and last nomination; SAG Awards nominee for Best Ensemble
Sneaks up on you, this one (just as did on nomination morning!). Yes, she's experienced a great loss and sometimes that creeps in on her, but neither Morton nor the film let that be the defining trait. She has this immense wellspring of joy and warmth that she shares with her daughters and the people who come into her life. She supports her husband sometimes beyond reason: her face at the fair as it turns from fun to seeing their entire world fall off a cliff to concern for her husband to determination and support...Gosh! Yes!
2. Charlize Theron as Aileen Wuornos
Monster
first of three nominations; Golden Globe winner for Best Actress in a Drama, National Board of Review's Breakthrough Performance by an Actress, SAG Awards winner for Best Actress; BAFTA Award nominee for Best Actress [2004], LAFCA Awards runner-up for Best Actress, NYFCC Awards second runner-up for Best Actress
Beyond the impressive makeup (I can only assume Bombshell's questionable win was to make up for Monster's lack of nomination), Theron embodies a woman who's been so ill-used she treats every interaction as a transaction, a challenge, or both. She's got nervous energy when trying to be pleasant, you can hear the edge in her voice trying to keep it together - and then the anger starts. It makes her scenes with Christina Ricci's Selby or Bruce Dern's Thomas all the more effective: with the former, she genuinely lets her guard down, dares to hope for more; with the latter, she's allowed space to just breathe. It's a bone-deep performance that does not justify the murders but does understand how Aileen viewed them.
1. Diane Keaton as Erica Barry
Something's Gotta Give
past winner, fourth and last nomination; Golden Globe winner for Best Actress in a Musical/Comedy, National Board of Review's Best Actress of 2003; SAG Awards nominee for Best Actress
By a hair, Keaton gets my vote. I think the past decade or so of (entertaining, to be clear) Keaton fluff has maybe dulled our appreciation for her specific set of skills but, she is so good at playing grounded, funny women, women you could meet at a grocery store (or a book club?): her dialogue, her reactions, the way she she carries herself, everything is natural and real. Erica might be her best in this vein, not a neurotic bundle of nerves but a confident woman who, yeah, has her own particularities, but who doesn't after 50+ years on this Earth? I love her genuine surprise at two new romances. Her irritation with and attraction to Jack Nicholson's Harry are both played so well, two sides of the same eye-rolling/scoffing coin. And you believe this woman would write these plays. Her crying jag is masterful: vulnerable, hilarious, relatable.
Next time, the nominees for Best Actor: Johnny Depp (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl), Ben Kingsley (House of Sand and Fog), Jude Law (Cold Mountain), Bill Murray (Lost in Translation), and Sean Penn (Mystic River).
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