Best Actress

Oh, man – if both Best Actor and Best Actress are repeat winners this year, I’ll be so disappointed. Winning damn near everything in sight is 1965 winner Julie Christie as a devoted wife slipping into Alzheimer’s. It was a performance of vivid frailty and strength, and a rare opportunity for an actress over 50 to appear onscreen with such [tasteful] sensuality. She’s golden. The one major award she lost went to Marion Cotillard, the 32-year-old French actress who portrayed Edith Piaf from her teen years to her 40’s (when she looked like she was in her 80’s.) It was a performance of great technical difficulty, capturing the singer’s gradual physical decay, and one of great emotional difficulty, throwing herself into Piaf’s deepest heartbreaks. Also golden. And for delightful contrast, the final mortal-lock for a Best Actress nod is 20-year-old Ellen Page who earned belly laughs and deep affection from peers, critics, and audiences as the wise-ass title character in Juno. Yes, performers that young are a tough sell, as are straight-up comedic performances, but her muscle with the major precursor awards has proven she’s more than the exception to the rule. I didn’t think I’d see Angelina Jolie’s name in an Oscar race again, considering her post-win filmography (and tabloid following), but she made a serious-actress comeback this year with genuine acclaim as Mariane Pearl in A Mighty Heart. The only suspense in this category will be who will get the fifth nomination. Keira Knightley could be invited back, but disappointment for Atonement weakens her chances. Amy Adams was a major surprise this year, with solid critical praise for a movie seemingly too fluffy to be nominated outside the Best Song category. Comparisons to Julie Andrews’s Oscar-winning work as Mary Poppins make her a bona-fide possibility, albeit a long-shot. Laura Linney and Nicole Kidman were early predictions in this category, but The Savages has missed out on many acting awards and Margot at the Wedding has been almost completely ignored. Besides Page and Jolie, there are two more pregnant characters in the mix: Keri Russell of Waitress and Katherine Heigl of Knocked Up, but they too have been largely ignored in the year-end accolades. So by default, my guess is Cate Blanchett will be left standing. Two of the Academy’s recent infatuations include British queens (Mirren, Dench) and actors competing in both the lead and supporting categories in the same year (Jamie Foxx, Julianne Moore.) Blanchett is a stone-cold guarantee for a supporting actress nod in I’m Not There, and you couldn’t show off better range in a single year than by playing Queen Elizabeth I and Bob Dylan. Plus there’s the novelty of nominating her for reprising her nominated role in the first Elizabeth film; the short list of actors who’ve been nominated for both original and sequel includes Bing Crosby as Father O’Malley, Al Pacino as Michael Corleone, and Paul Newman as Fast Eddie Felson.