On a regular basis I also get asked the equally loathsome question: who are your favorite actors? I find this question incredibly flawed since so many great actors are guilty of many bad performances, more often than not, the result of bad writing and/or bad directing. Hitchcock once referred to actors as cattle and David Mamet has written a book about the same notion, and even though I don't entirely agree with them, there is some truth. Anyways, before I get carried away and end up talking myself out of it, I think its time I wrote my first list. But I'm not content writing about who my favorite female actor is, since I don't like to play favorites. Instead, I've chosen to pick my 20 favorite female performances because I believe that not every actor has had the opportunity to make a career out of their abilities. Absent from my list are actors portraying characters already prominent in the public eye. Imitation is not my idea of a great performance, if anything it's far too easy a crutch and often, far too showy a role. Tina Fey does a great Sarah Palin but is Tina Fey a brilliant actress?
1) Renée Maria Falconetti in Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc. Her one film. Silent. Close-ups. No make-up. Dreyer almost killed her pulling this performance out of her. No wonder she retired.
2) Faye Dunaway in Polanski's Chinatown. Nobody does 'damaged goods' better than Faye and Polanski's masterpiece is her best work.
3) Bibi Andersson in Bergman's Persona. She owns the screen and nearly every second of the running time.
4) Jane Fonda in Pakula's Klute. She's absolutely effortless and utterly convincing.
5) Rachel Roberts in This Sporting Life. Emotionally crippled, miserable and impossibly sexual.
6) Helen Mirren in Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Theif, His Wife, Her Lover. She expresses every possible emotion with absolute grace and efficiency.
7) Setsuko Hara in Ozu's Early Summer. Stuck between tradition and free will, Hara's struggle is transcendent.
8) Emer McCourt in Ken Loach's Riff Raff. So real you can't help but wonder if she really is this much of a mess in real life.
9) Caroline Ducey in Katherine Breillat's Romance. She bares it all on every single level.
10) Chloe Webb in Alex Cox's Sid and Nancy. To make a choice to be unwatchably shrill and obnoxious throughout and entire film takes more than courage, it takes talent.
11) Karen Black in Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces. See above but throw in more humor and a kicked dog reaction to the man she loves.
12) Linda Hunt in The Year of Living Dangerously. She played a man and unless you knew of her, you would never know she wasn't a man. No surprise she won the Academy Award.
13) Monica Vitti in Antonioni's L'eclisse. She perfectly depicts the inherent sadness and complexity of a woman navigating the men in her life.
14) Laura Linney in The Squid and the Whale. A great script, a great character and a homerun performance.
15) Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone. If I wasn't a huge fan of The Wire I would have thought she was a non-actor.
16) Mariangela Melato in Wertmüller's Swept Away... By an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August. Truly ugly, truly human and willing to go all the way.
17) Helena Bonham Carter in Mort Ransen's overlooked Margaret's Museum. Heartbreaking.
18) Cathy Moriarty in Raging Bull. No experience necessary -- a one hit wonder if there ever was one.
19) Judy Davis in Woody's Husbands and Wives. Manic. Watching her unravel is a treat.
20) Julia Roberts in Mike Nichols' Closer. Brutally cold and indifferent. Who knew she could be so good. Perhaps her first and last great performance.
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