1. Emily Blunt
2018 was a killer year for Emily Blunt: A Quiet Place was a critical acclaimed box-office champion (it grossed $340.9M worldwide from a $20M budget) and she starred the highly antecipated Mary Poppins Returns, which got a warm critical reception and it also grossed a lot of money at the Christmas box-office ($309.8M worldwide, but it costed $130M to make). And what do both productions have in common? A pair of Emily Blunt's performances that also got rave reviews. In fact, I was expecting 2018 to be the year of the first Oscar nominated Blunt performance... but it didn't materialized. After a Golden Globe nomination (Mary Poppins Returns), 2 SAG Award nominations (Best Leading Actress for MPReturns and Best Supporting Actress for A Quiet Place) and 2 Critics' Choice nods for Poppins, an Oscar nomination just seemed a natural thing to happen. But it didn't! No matter what, Emily Blunt is the actress of the year! And let's not forget she was able to fill Julie Andrews' shoes as the magical flying nanny!
2. Nicole Kidman
Last year was a rich Kidman year: an acclaimed indie production, an Oscar hopeful film and a blockbuster... Kidman was shinning everywhere, but her greatest 2018's highlight was her astonishing performance in Destroyer - a transformative acting turn like anything you've ever seen from Kidman! A true tour de force performance that was ignored by the AMPAS members. But... well... we are getting used to see Kidman going unrecognized when she's at the top of her game, just because the top of her game doesn't look safe. No surprise people were more optimistic in terms of award love for her performance as a suffering mother/wife in Boy Erased - alongside Hedges, she's the emotional center of the whole movie as a woman who can do nothing but love her child no matter what. A beautiful performance that didn't get it deserved - but another damn winning performance. And, finally, she had a key role in DC Extended Universe's Aquaman as Queen Atlanna... not the best role of her life for sure, but she was part of a movie that made A LOT OF MONEY ($1.077 billion worldwide). What an impressive year for Kidman!
3. Regina King
The year she received her third Emmy Award (for Seven Seconds), Regina King also amazed audiences and critics with her performance in If Beale Street Could Talk! The movie was considered a major Best Picture contender and in spite of missing a Best Picture nod, Beale Street still managed to get 3 Oscar nominations: Best Adapted Screenplay (Barry Jenkins), Best Original Score (Nicholas Britell) and Best Supporting Actress (Regina King). She reigned supreme in the Best Supporting Actress race during the critics associations awards season and she even won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture! Somehow, she missed a SAG Award nomination, but she's still the frontrunner for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Her performance alone makes King deserving of a spot in the TOP 5 Actresses of the Year list - once you see her as Sharon Rivers, you know you have one of the best working actresses in front of you! If Beale Street Could Talk would never be same without her!
4. Rachel Weisz
She has just scored the second Oscar nomination of her career for The Favourite (a recognition she was overdue already), but it is impossible to forget how good she's in Disobedience! In Sebástian Lelio's latest she plays a Jewish woman who comes back to her strict Orthodox Jewish community for her father's funeral and she becomes involved in a love triangle because of her love for another woman - it's a gripping leading performance! And while Weisz proved to be a true leading lady in Disobedience, she was one of the most delicious things about The Favourite - maybe a co-lead performance of a 3 women show, but still the most "supporting performance" of all three. In The Favourite, she plays Sarah Churchill and critics and awards weren't able to resist to her charms: an Oscar nod, a Golden Globe nod, a BAFTA nod, a SAG Award nom (for which she's considered a safe bet for a win) and two Critics' Choice Awards. After great works in The Whistleblower (2010), The Deep Blue Sea (2011), The Lobster (2015), The Light Between Oceans (2016) and My Cousin Rachel (2017), Weisz is getting the recognition she deserves for a brilliant post-The Constant Gardner career (for which she score an Oscar win).
5. Stefani Germanotta AKA Lady Gaga
Not a Gaga fan at all and I was pretty sceptical about her in A Star Is Born... until I watched the movie! Stefani Germanotta AKA Lady Gaga does deliver a great acting turn. It's a knockout performance! It has nothing to do with her previous acting work in Machete Kills (2013), Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) or American Horror Story: Hotel TV series (2015) - here, you feel she's the electricity that makes A Star Is Born so engaging. Her chemistry with Bradley Cooper is great. Her acting range is better than a big couple of actresses' working these days. You see she's more of a committed actress than a natural talent, but... you know what? I think there's no problem about that when the final product is a performance as great as hers. Stripped from her accessories and makeup-free, Lady Gaga proved she's able to give a voice and embody a character. The final result? An Oscar nomination for Best Actress, a Golden Globe nod, a BAFTA nod, 2 SAG nominations (one for Best Leading Actress and another for Best Ensemble Performance) and even a Critics' Choice Award win for Best Actress. A star is born!
- Breakthrough Actress of the Year: Amandla Stenberg, The Hate U Give
I could have picked Thomasin McKenzie (Leave No Trace), Elsie Fisher (Eight Grade) or Lady Gaga (A Star Is Born) for this spot, but the actress who impressed me the most was Amandla Stenberg. I believe we have a big acting promising here! She delivered an Oscar-caliber performance in The Hate U Give, proving she's a true leading lady and she's destined to become a major star in the future - she received the AAFCA Award for Breakout Performance, the Hollywood Film Award for Breakthrough Actress and she even won Indiana Film Journalists Association Award for Best Actress, besides a Critics' Choice Award for Best Young Actor/Actress.- Honorable mention: Toni Collette, Hereditary
I couldn't not include Toni Collette in this year's list: she delivers the best performance of her career in Hereditary. It will be remembered as one of the greatest performances in the horror genre and one of the biggest Oscar snubs of the decade. She kills as the mentally unstable grieving woman who falls in the world of madness. A memorable acting turn that beats her previous great works in The Sixth Sense (1999), The Hours (2002) or the feel-good Little Miss Sunshine (2006). At least critics associations paid attention to her work and recognized it!
Comments