Best Actress Oscar 2014

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Which actress gets your vote?
15.63%
5 votes
AMY ADAMS, American Hustle
62.50%
20 votes
CATE BLANCHETT, Blue Jasmine
15.63%
5 votes
SANDRA BULLOCK, Gravity
0%
0 votes
JUDI DENCH, Philomena
6.25%
2 votes
MERYL STREEP, August: Osage County
32 votes. You may not vote on this poll




I can't say I completely disagree with Sexy here. She's a great actress and all, but the Academy is a little bit too much in love with her, in my opinion.
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Emma Thompson was snubbed big time.

Amy Adams doesn't have a chance against Blanchett, and that's who my pick is.
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meryl streep is a great actress, but all of her roles are complete awards bait.
Maybe it is because dramas appeal to me so much but the "awards bait" argument baffles me a bit. I get what people mean but I don't know that directors and actors pick films simply because they think they may get awards. Especially someone as entrenched as Streep. I think chances are the projects that appeal to her just happen to be the ones that appeal to award committees as well. Most, not all, of the films I end up loving each year get pretty good critical claim. I think it is because well written character dramas are what appeal to me. Not because I love awards shows.
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Of the nominated performances, I've only seen Adams in American Hustle and I wasn't all that impressed with it.
Watch it again. It was a great performance.



28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
I loved Amy Adams and feel that Streep's nomination was simply because she was Streep and they wanted to fill out the 5th spot.

This will go to Blanchett.
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I agree with Emma getting snubbed. Very wonderful little story too, that Saving Mr. Banks.
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Meryl just keeps adding to her record for the most nominations in the acting categories, with August: Osage County being her eighteenth: fifteen as Best Actress, and three as Supporting Actress. In all those nominations, she has "only" won three times: Kramer vs. Kramer, Sophie's Choice and just two years ago for The Iron Lady. That was a long break between 1983 and 2012, but for you Streep haters, it's pretty unlikely that she'll win again this year. Oh, she'll most definitely be back, and almost surely win again. But I'd give her long odds to win for this one. You can never count her out, obviously, but she isn't the favorite to win. Kate Hepburn holds the lead for most Best Actress Oscars won, at four. Meryl is in a group with twelve other women who have won twice, four of whom are also still alive (Jodie Foster, Sally Field, Jane Fonda, and Hilary Swank), but if any of them realistically has a chance of challenging Hepburn, you gotta figure it's the sixty-four-year-old Meryl. Just not this year.

Judi Dench is seventy-nine and still going strong. This is her seventh overall nomination, fifth as Best Actress. Her only previous win came in one of the two Supporting performances, Shakespeare in Love. She is fantastic in Philomena, and the film getting a nomination for Best Picture was a happy minor surprise. Even though there are several scenes that could be master classes on the art of screen acting, she's probably going to lose out to one of the younger ladies, this year. But wow, she is great, and I'm glad she got the nomination.

Sandra Bullock was terrific in Gravity, I suspect even winning over some people who haven't ever thought much of her as an actress. Her only other nomination was when she won for The Blind Side. Unlike orbiting space debris, the film and her performance have probably lost much of their momentum since it opened wide in October and became an unexpected box office hit and a critical darling, but it wouldn't be a complete shock to hear her name called, either.

This is Amy Adams' first nomination as Best Actress, though she has four previous nods as Supporting Actress (Junebug, Doubt, The Fighter, and The Master), without a win. I loved her in American Hustle, but it may be a case of bad timing, going against yet another performance from a Woody Allen movie.

With the two this year, Woody Allen movies have now produced eighteen acting nominations (including Woody himself, in Annie Hall), with six wins in the previous sixteen: Diane Keaton (Annie Hall), Michael Caine (Hannah & Her Sisters), Dianne Weist twice (Hannah & Her Sisters and Bullets Over Broadway), Mira Sorvino (Mighty Aphrodite) and Penelope Cruz (Vicky Christina Barcelona). Cate Blanchett has to be considered the favorite going in, and if that gives The Wood Man seven winning performances he'll be behind only Elia Kazan and William Wyler, who have guided performers to nine and fourteen wins, respectively. At seventy-eight, he's probably running out of time, and though those eighteen nominations are surely impressive, he'll never catch the leader, William Wyler, who had thirty-six! Kazan had twenty-four, and Woody isn't even the living director with the most, as Martin Scorsese now has twenty-two with DiCaprio and Jonah Hill this year.

This is Blanchett's fifth overall Oscar nomination, and third as Best Actress (the other two coming in Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age). Her only win, thus far, is for playing Katharine Hepburn in Scorsese's The Aviator.


Blanchett did win the SAG Award yesterday, which has been 68% historically reliable as a predictor, thus far, with thirteen of the previous nineteen matching Oscar - though one of those years was a category mismatch, with Kate Winslet winning the Oscar for The Reader but that performance only being a Supporting Actress at the SAGs, which she won (Meryl Streep won the SAG for Doubt as Lead Actress). SAG has been wrong in this category two other times in the past ten years, with Viola Davis (The Help)/Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady) and Julie Christie (Away from Her)/Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose).

Blanchett did also win Best Actress Drama at the Golden Globes, but of course they hedged their bets by also naming Amy Adams Best Actress Comedy/Musical, which make the predicting prowess of the Golden Globes problematic.

By splitting into the two categories and getting two picks per year, the Golden Globes have been "right" about Best Actress at the Oscars, one way or the other, in sixteen of the past twenty years. The differences were 1995: Sharon Stone (Casino)/Nicole Kidman (To Die For) and Susan Sarandon got the Oscar for Dead Man Walking, 1996: Brenda Blethyn (Secrets & Lies)/Madonna (Evita) while Frances McDormand earned the Oscar for Fargo, 2001: Sissy Spacek (In the Bedroom)/Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge!) with Halle Berry winning the Academy Award for Monster's Ball, and 2008: Kate Winslet (Revolutionary Road)/Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky) but Winslet won the Oscar for Best Actress in The Reader, not Revolutionary Road (like the SAGs, the Globes considered The Reader a Supporting performance).

It certainly feels like Blanchett's to lose, at this point.

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I've had it with her! EVERY YEAR, no matter what movie she does, she gets a nomination.
Have you seen August: Osage County?

As of last night, I've seen all of the nominated performances and Streep's was my favorite. I don't think she'll win it, though. I'm guessing Blanchett will take the prize.



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Ok, I've got problems with this one. They are not logical problems, they are emotional ones.

To be honest, I think Vivien Leigh did a better performance than Cate Blanchett. After all, this is nothing but a modern recycle of Blanche DuBois. I hated this movie. I was surprised how much I hated it. And I think it had to do with what I perceived as a complete steal by Woody Allen. He wins screenplay and I quit. :roll eyes:

That should not color my view of Cate's performance, but it did. I get why she will win. I just don't care if she does.

I guess I'm in the minority, but I really like August:Osage County a lot. I really enjoyed watching a crazy family get together. Maybe I'm a masochist, but I loved it, and enjoyed Meryl's performance a lot.

I recently read where an "Oscar insider" said Sandra's performance was terrible. Wow, I loved it and she really got to me when she thought it was over and she had to scramble to survive. I was totally enthralled.

I guess I don't understand acting then. Whatever.



I've seen Blue Jasmine and i wasn't impressed with Blanchet's performance. My vote goes for Meryl Streep this year, she was amazing in August Ousage County.

People saying that she got a nomination this year just because of her reputation is a joke.



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Have you seen August: Osage County?

As of last night, I've seen all of the nominated performances and Streep's was my favorite. I don't think she'll win it, though. I'm guessing Blanchett will take the prize.
We are of the complete opposite thought this year.



I've not seen Streep's performance (I'll watch it today probably) but I would currently have them:

1. Cate Blanchett
2. Judi Dench
3. Sandra Bullock
4. Amy Adams

I should point out that it's not Adams fault I have her last. She's a good actress - it was just such a lightweight role.



At this point, they should just rename the golden statue and call it the Meryl

It's still a lock on Cate, one of the greatest actresses, if not THE greatest actress, of her generation.