THE TEN GREATEST PERFORMANCES - FEMALE
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Written By: John H. Foote
1. Meryl Streep in Sophie’s Choice (1982)…Is there a more poignant or haunting moment in modern cinema than the moment when Sophie (Streep) gives away her child to death in the concentration camps run by the Nazis? Her eyes filling with tears, barely able to speak, she utters a silent scream that is a primal shriek from the depths of the soul for the inhumanities being done to her. Streep was still new on the film scene when she stunned audiences with this astonishing performance as a woman trying to escape the ghosts of the war still clinging to her soul and forging their way into her present. Streep has been remarkable since yet never equally this, though no one likely will.

2. Jane Fonda in Klute (1971)…Fonda’s performance as the tough yet vulnerable call girl being pursued by a client is brittle and powerful as she conveys virtually every single emotion known to man in her performance. Biting and caustic, she is never easy to like, yet always easy to feel for in this watershed performance that changed everything for women in cinema in the seventies. The first performance in which a woman looked wasted and dreadful, Fonda inhabited this character’s soul and displayed to the audience that even the lowlifes have decency in them and need love.
3. Katherine Hepburn in Long Day’s Journey into Night (1962)…Over the course of her impressive career she was often brilliant, but in this superb adaptation of O’Neill’s great play she creates the pathetic yet terrified Mary Tyrone, a drug addict struggling with the secrets of her family and the failure of her beloved boys, a failure she sees inherently as her own. Hepburn was said to be miscast in the role, yet grabbed it with her great talent and made it so much her own that no one has ever come close again. Oft imitated never equaled, Hepburn made this part her own and somehow transcended even the masterful writing of the great O’Neill.

4. Holly Hunter in The Piano (1993)…in a performance that is silent, with the exception of her voice on the track, Holly Hunter reminds one of the power of the visual and takes us back to the days of silent screen acting with her haunting performance as a fiercely independent deaf mute who with her daughter goes to New Zealand as a mail order bride and finds horror and love. Hunter makes us feel the heat of the erotic relationship between she and actor Harvey Keitel, and superbly merges her character’s dependency on her daughter with her own survival. Astonishing.

5. Meryl Streep in A Cry in the Dark (1988)…Cast as Australian Lindy Chamberlain, accused of killing her infant child and convicted of the crime before being found innocent, Streep brings the chill to the performance that Chamberlain brought to the court room. Refusing to allow the public to see her weep for the loss of her child is probably what sent her to jail, and Streep captures her steely resolve to utter perfection. The courage of the performance is that Streep makes us aware that it is possible this woman could have killed her child, and that she certainly possesses the strength to do such a thing, though her humanity and love prevented it. One of the great unknown performances.

6. Sally Field in Norma Rae (1979)…Finally free of being thought of as The Flying Nun, Field won the role of the labour organizer Norma Rae after a long discussion with director Martin Ritt who then cast her. As an illiterate, often ignorant, unwed mother (hell she does not even know who the fathers are), Field slips under the sweaty skin of this character and allows us to see the dawning of awareness and a growing intellect and need to be treated right. A major performance at the time, she was right away thought of as a serious actress, and deservedly so because this is a very serious and very fine performance.

7. Bette Davis in All About Eve (1950)…Aside from her line, “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night”, Davis delivers the good as a famous actress being used by an up and coming actress, and recognizes the deception as it is happening. Was there anybody who could deliver a caustic line like Bette Davis? Not likely, but I do not believe she is given the credit she deserves as an artist. She slipped under the skin of the character so completely all traces of her were gone. In All About Eve (1950) she is likely channeling elements of herself into the performance and the trick is all we see is the character.

8. Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard (1950)…A stroke of genius by director by Billy Wilder casting Swanson as a famous silent screen gone to emotional decay, when Swanson herself was a former silent screen star who rarely worked anymore. She responded with the finest performance of her career and one of the finest of all time. As Norma Desmond a former star she is dwelling in the past, when she was a major star and takes into her home and bed a young writer who she commissions to write a screenplay that will be her comeback. Deluded and pathetic, Swanson captures the insanity and madness of the character and even when arrested for murder we feel for her.
9. Ellen Burstyn in Requiem for a Dream (2000)…The transformation of Ellen Burstyn in this film is astonishing and heartbreaking as she moves from being a normal Jewish widow addicted to her game shows to an emotional and physical wreck addicted to drugs which she believes will help her lose weight and keep her going. The performance is simply stunning to behold; before our eyes she becomes an underweight, white hair hag who is to be pitied more than anything else. How Burstyn lost the Oscar to Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich (2000) is a mystery to me. A searing performance that will melt itself into your mind long after the film is over.
10. Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment (1983)…as Aurora Greenway, the mother from hell, she also makes it clear her willingness to travel through hell for her ill daughter, played marvelously by Debra Winger. MacLaine throws herself into this role with the knowledge this is the role of her career and she did not want to blow it. She did not. She is annoying, cruel, savage, anxious, and ultimately heartbreaking as she goes through the nightmare of any parent, that is watching her daughter die. One moment we might want to smack her the next grab hold and hold on to her for dear life. Her performance crackles with confidence.

Runners-up: Bette Davis in Jezebel (1938); Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz (1939); Greer Garson in Mrs. Miniver (1942); Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca (1943); Olivia de Havilland in The Snake Pit (1948); Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951); Katherine Hepburn in The African Queen (1951); Leslie Caron in Lily (1953); Judy Garland in A Star is Born (1954); Katherine Hepburn in Summertime (1955); Joanne Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve (1957); Anne Bancroft in The Miracle Worker (1962); Elizabeth Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966); Katherine Hepburn in A Lion in Winter (1968); Jane Fonda in They Shoot Horses Don’t They (1969); Ellen Burstyn in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974); Liv Ullman in Face to Face (1976); Diane Keaton in Annie Hall (1977); Jane Fonda in Coming Home (1978); Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980); Jessica Lange in Frances (1982); Debra Winger in Terms of Endearment (1983); Meryl Streep in Out of Africa (1985); Jessica Tandy in Driving Miss Daisy (1989); Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs (1991); Emma Thomson in Howard’s End (1992); Susan Sarandon in Dead Man Walking (1995); Meryl Streep in The Bridges of Madison County (1995); Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth (1998); Hilary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry (1999); Halle Berry in Monsters Ball (2001); Nicole Kidman in Cold Mountain (2003); Charlize Theron in Monster (2003)
















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