Official Nominations: Jessica Lange. Glenn Close. Teri Garr. Kim Stanley. Lesley Ann Warren.
A solid if unremarkable list this year, with Jessica Lange picking up the win for Tootsie as a struggling actress in a dodgy relationship with her director. The weird thing is… it should be a Best Actress nomination, not a support. The support pick should stay with Teri Garr in the same movie as a somewhat more ditzy up and coming actress enamoured with Dustin Hoffman’s character. Both are good – Lange especially. Close is great in her debut, The World According To Garp, playing Robin Williams’ mother while Kim Stanley plays the mother of Frances Farmer (Lange again). She’s fine, but it’s a Lange vehicle. Finally, we get our mandatory musical nomination with Leslie Ann Warren as the somewhat unhinged gal to a local gangster. Fine.
My Winner: Jessica Lange
My Nominations: Sean Young. Adrienne Barbeau. Phoebe Cates. Karen Allen. Linda Hunt.
Lets get the silliness out of the way first – Linda Hunt wins this very award for The Year Of Living Dangerously in 1983. It’s a 1982 movie, so I’m sticking her here instead, for yet another gender/race-bending role. Questionable these days for numerous reasons, but she’s great.
Beyond Hunt, all of my nominations are new picks. Sean Young is the glassy eyed replicant, foil to Harrison Ford’s Deckard in Blade Runner and it remains the performance she is most remembered for – somehow more human than the people and machines around her, but with the same coldness which is so pervasive throughout the film. Phoebe Cates appears in her most iconic role as the literal girl of your dreams, but as with many of the characters in Fast Times, the writing and performances are such that she is elevated above a one note caricature into a well rounded coming of age icon.
Karen Allen attempts to break free of her Raiders Of The Lost Ark fame by playing as Albert Finney’s mistress in the gloomy Shoot The Moon, a film in which the wrong stars got the attention. Finally, I’ll allow myself a bit of a personal preference for Adrienne Barbeau as she gives one of the most memorable performances in any anthology movie, that of the sneering overbearing wife Wilma in Creepshow. She has a whale of time, as do we watching her.
My Winner: Linda Hunt
Let us know your winner in the comments!
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