20 Favorite Actresses (from the movies . . . this week . . .)

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I've written about some favorite performers before, and there's a new meme going around the film blogs that appeals to the OCD listmaker in me.

Nathaniel R. at Film Experience Blog innocently started a meme nine days ago that, as he notes, evolved out of control - name and post pictures of your 20 All-Time Favorite Actresses (an original part of his meme seems to have also been to just put them in no particular order, and without comment, which has fallen by the wayside for most others doing this). Why? Well, as he says, "Sometimes you need to be reminded."

He tagged a few people, and they tagged a few, and then everyone just started doing it, tagged or not (ah, film geekery! the province of the OCD and/or slight Asperger's sufferers!). Now dozens of lists are up. Maybe over a hundred (Nathaniel had to stop linking to them; there wasn't time or space). I made up a list, but wasn't going to post it until I got a little bored last night and started searching for pictures of the women I'd had down. Once I got the pictures and cleaned them up, well, there was no reason not to post.

Rules in making the list for myself were: The listed actresses were to be "favorites" based on movie performances only, which not only took out all the stage actresses I work with, of course (several of whom, no joke, would be at the top of my list) but also actresses whose work I primarily love from television - so that took out Helen Mirren, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Melissa Leo. Also, to narrow it down and make it workable, they had to have more than one "key performance" which made them a Favorite - which took out most of my favorite individual performances from all of film, from Agnes Moorehead, Naomi Watts, Julia Ormond, Melanie Lynskey, Miriam Hopkins, Janet Gaynor, Marlene Dietrich, Kim Novak, Tippi Hedren, and Greta Garbo.

And I wound up eliminating a number of actresses who I would have thought would be here, whose work is wider and more varied than the ones below, but who haven't had - for me - those two or three moments that jump to another level and really grab me the same way: Jodie Foster, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, Cate Blanchett, Gloria Grahame, Marie Windsor, Tilda Swinton, and Elizabeth Russell. There, with all the ones I've now named PRIOR to my list, you have a good alternate 21 runners-up. Throw in Anna Faris for 22, just because (yeah, I'm among those who're waiting for her to get a really good part).

So here - for this week at least (and it's changed several times in the week I've had the list sitting around) - are my 20 Favorite Movie Actresses, in alphabetical order:

Jenny Agutter - Walkabout, Logan's Run, Equus, An American Werewolf in London


Ingrid Bergman - Casablanca, Notorious, Under Capricorn, Murder on the Orient Express, Autumn Sonata


Ellen Burstyn - Pit Stop, The Last Picture Show, The Exorcist, Same Time, Next Year, Resurrection, Requiem for a Dream


Kathleen Byron - A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus, The Small Back Room


Angie Dickinson - Rio Bravo, The Killers, Point Blank, Dressed to Kill


Miss Pamela Grier - The Big Bird Cage, Coffy, Foxy Brown, Sheba, Baby, Friday Foster, Fort Apache The Bronx, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Jackie Brown, Ghosts of Mars


Jessica Harper - Inserts, Phantom of the Paradise, Love and Death, Suspiria, Stardust Memories, Shock Treatment, Pennies from Heaven, My Favorite Year, Minority Report


Holly Hunter - Raising Arizona, Broadcast News, The Piano, The Firm, Crash, A Life Less Ordinary, Timecode, O Brother Where Art Thou?


Kim Hunter - The Seventh Victim, A Matter of Life and Death, A Streetcar Named Desire, Escape from the Planet of the Apes


Anna Karina - Une femme est une femme, Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux, Bande à part, Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution, Pierrot le fou, Made in U.S.A.


Nicole Kidman - Dead Calm, Billy Bathgate, Malice, To Die For, The Portrait of a Lady, Eyes Wide Shut, The Others, Dogville


Sheryl Lee - Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Backbeat, Mother Night


Brigitte Lin - Police Story, Peking Opera Blues, Swordsman II, The Bride with White Hair, Chungking Express


Julianne Moore - The Fugitive, Safe, Assassins, Boogie Nights, The Big Lebowski, Psycho, Magnolia, Not I, The Hours, I'm Not There


Michelle Pfeiffer - Scarface, Into the Night, Sweet Liberty, Dangerous Liaisons, The Russia House, Batman Returns, The Age of Innocence


Vanessa Redgrave - Blowup, The Devils, Murder on the Orient Express, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Prick Up Your Ears, Mission: Impossible


Theresa Russell - Bad Timing, Eureka, Insignificance, Kafka, Wild Things


Sissy Spacek - Badlands, Carrie, 3 Women, Missing, The Straight Story


Liv Ullmann - Persona, Shame, Hour of the Wolf, The Passion of Anna, Scenes from a Marriage


Kate Winslet - Heavenly Creatures, Jude, Holy Smoke, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Romance & Cigarettes

Now of course, I want to pick the men . . . let's see . . . Bogie . . . Clooney . . . Dourif . . . Brando . . . Marvin . . . Hoskins . . .

UPDATE

Daniel McKleinfeld correctly notes that I left off someone I should not have. I'll leave the above 20, but really, I should be replacing Jenny Agutter with:

Jennifer Jason Leigh - Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Flesh + Blood, The Hitcher, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Rush, Single White Female, Short Cuts, The Hudsucker Proxy, Georgia, Dolores Claiborne, Kansas City, eXistenZ

Comments

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All of the above were in a lot more films than I listed - I was only mentioning the specific films that were the reason they were on my list.

And I nearly did include Titanic on Winslet's list anyway (I included a number of movies where I dislike the movie and love the performance in it) as I nearly included Moulin Rouge! for Kidman, but in the end decided those performances weren't reasons they were here.

So Haunting

[(Anonymous)]

This list indicates a strong preference for slightly spooky / haunted actresses.

which is all right by me. well done.

Nathaniel
http://filmexperience.blogspot.com

Re: So Haunting

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Thanks for starting the meme, Nathaniel! Lots of interesting posts out there now.