QuadFilm Picks The Oscars: Best Actress

The 83rd annual Academy Awards are less than a week away, and the Quad is here to bring you up to speed on the most popular nominees, potential upsets, and can’t miss winners for this year’s Oscars. Each day, a different critic will be counting down our top picks (and the safest bets) for the winners in each of the big categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress.
Photo courtesy of ABC

The biggest night in the film industry is rapidly approaching, and while Hollywood’s top actresses finalize details on designer dresses and dashing dates, a talented five will likely be putting the finishing touches on their acceptance speeches. The horserace for Best Actress is an impressive one this year, full of deliciously diverse roles—a tormented ballerina with mommy issues, a mountain girl with daddy issues, a downtrodden wife, a grief-ridden mother, and a wine-loving lesbian doctor. Yet, despite the many talents of this year’s nominated actresses, only one can come away with the big prize on Oscar night.

And the nominees are:

Annette Bening- The Kids Are All Right

Nicole Kidman- Rabbit Hole

Jennifer Lawrence- Winter’s Bone

Natalie Portman- Black Swan

Michelle Williams- Blue Valentine

Portman in Black Swan (Photo courtesy of Fox Searchlight).

The Favorite: Natalie Portman- Black Swan.

Portman is the hands down favorite, giving the performance of her career as prima ballerina Nina Sayers in Black Swan. Always dedicated to her roles (remember the V for Vendetta-era shaved head?), she dropped 20 pounds off her already petite figure to play the ballerina, took ballet training for a year, and rushed headfirst into the film’s dark psychological play.

However, nowadays, garnering an Oscar win is as much about the awards season campaign as it is the performance, and Portman’s “campaign” was as on point as her performance. The two-time Oscar nominee not only got engaged to her Black Swan choreographer Benjamin Millepied, but also announced in December that she was pregnant with her first child. The sight of the glowing mother-to-be at an awards’ podium was a common one this season, with Portman already nabbing the Golden Globe, SAG, BAFTA and Critics’ Choice award for her role in Black Swan, and her momentum doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon. It’s her year.

Potential Upset: Annette Bening- The Kids Are All Right

Four-time Oscar nominee and veteran actress Annette Bening is due for a win, and the Academy has a little habit of giving out “career wins,” pseudo lifetime achievement awards applauding an actor’s entire career rather than a single performance. Take last year’s Best Actor winner Jeff Bridges. Yes, his work in Crazy Heart was impressive, but his win seemed the collective result of five nominations and a career that’s spanned over four decades. While Bening’s role in Kids may not be dramatic enough for the big win, the Academy could pull the career card for Bening and give her some overdue Oscar love.

Williams in Blue Valentine (Photo courtesy of the Weinstein Company).

Honorable Mention: Michelle Williams- Blue Valentine.

It’s clear that this will not be Williams’s year, what with louder performances like Portman’s overshadowing her quietly devastating turn as a downtrodden wife in Blue Valentine. There were no fancy camera angles, no dancing, no feathers, nothing to distract from the brutal honesty of Williams’s performance, and any other year, she’d be a shoe-in. The actress, who was previously nominated for her breathtaking supporting work in 2005’s Brokeback Mountain, has been consistently, heartbreakingly good over the past few years. And while Williams will likely leave empty-handed this year, the nomination is another reminder of her immense talent, another promise that her year will come soon.

It’s an Honor to be Nominated: Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone) and Nicole Kidman (Rabbit Hole).

Despite rave reviews for Jennifer Lawrence’s performance, Winter’s Bone was little seen, and her youth and greenness will work against her in the competitive category. Kidman has a string of recent flops weighing down her rise to Oscar gold. Add the fact that Bening’s Kids costar Julianne Moore was as, if not more, deserving of a spot in the Best Actress line-up than Kidman was, and the Rabbit Hole actress is also easily ruled out.

The Verdict: Natalie Portman

Unless there’s a super-surprising upset by Bening, Portman’s going to dance away with an Oscar come Sunday.

About Chree Izzo

Chree Izzo (COM/CAS '11) loves pop culture more than Snookie loves tanned juiceheads, which is saying something.

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