Oscar's Best Actress 2023

Blanchett has not proven she is great at comedy, yet. To be fair she hasn't taken a lot of swings at the genre, but Where'd You Go, Bernadette? is bad and she is flat in it, so flat that I don't know that she has a light comedy gear. Her best comic performance to date is probably Don't Look Up as the vapid morning show talking head, but it is a supporting role. I know she won her previous Best Actress Oscar for Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine, but that is Woody's specific brand of dramady and frankly I don't think it is one of her best roles anyway, Oscar not withstanding.

Streep does have a comedy gear. Kate Hepburn did, of course.

Not that comedy chops are a prerequisite for being deemed "best of all time", but it is a deficit I see in her. Thus far.

But Daniel Day-Lewis isn't much of a comedian, either (ever seen Stars & Bars? Yowza) and surely he must be in the conversation for the best of the best.

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What Blanchett performance do you think is better than Tar?

I know I'm of the minority, but I think Grace Kelly and Naomi Watts deserve some props too.

Also wanted to mention that I think Risenborough's nomination should have gone to Danielle Deadwyler for Till

Ana de Afrmas works very hard in Blonde, but my white hot hatred for the film has colored my feelings about her performance.

I couldn't finish Tar. Too slow and boring for my taste. I voted for Yeoh, even though I did not like Everything Everywhere.

Cate has already won twice before. This is the year they award an Asian actress. It's politics as usual.

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Would swap De Armas and Riseborough for V.Davis and D. Deadwyler easily.

Riseborough's nomination and the actions surrounding it has the potential to overshadow the ceremony and potentially derail Andrea's career...maybe....possibly...sort of.

Not a good look at all.

Glad I'm not the only one who thinks Deadwyler should have gotten a nomination.

Don't be fooled that the fact that she already has two Oscars is going to count against Blanchett. She's already won the Globe and the BAFTA, not to mention the fact that it's an extraordinary performance.

If she wins, wouldn't that make her the first actress in history to win 3 Oscars?

Don't get me wrong, I think Cate is a brilliant actress, possibly the second best actress of all time behind Meryl Streep.

But I think the Academy wants to make history by awarding the Asian actors this year.

It's criminal that she wasn't nominated. Her performance in Till was great.

Katharine Hepburn won four Oscars and Meryl Streep has three. One of Streep's Oscars is in the supporting category, the one for Kramer VS Kramer. All four of Hepburn's Oscars are leading role Statues.

Straight shootout between Cate Blanchett & Michelle Yeoh. Michelle is probably the fav given the wave EEAAO is on, but don't discount Cate as she was pretty fantastic in Tar... then again, when isn't she?)



Apart from those 2 though, strange picks for the other noms, and some glaring omissions IMO.

I know it was more of a supporting role, and it probably won’t happen here, but Michelle Williams is due as well.

If you haven't seen Andrea Riseborough s performance Im here to tell you to go see it. Simply one of the best performances I've seen in quite some time.

Just finished watching To Leslie so I have now seen all five Best Actress nominees. As good as Riseborough was, I still think Deadwyler was better in Till

I've seen 4/5 of the performances here - haven't seen To Leslie. Personally, I thought Michelle Williams in The Fabelmans was the best, and I want her to win, but this is another contest between two - it's Michelle Yeoh vs Cate Blanchett for the Oscar. I gravitate towards Cate Blanchett because she's Australian and she was terrific. The only other notable is in a negative sense - Ana de Armas was terrible in Blonde.

That sums up my thoughts about it perfectly.

I agree with everything everyone is saying in this thread.

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I watched To Leslie today. I thought Andrea Riseborough was good, but not exceptional or Oscar worthy.

While Cate Blanchett is not the oldest of the five nominees she is definitely the most nominated. Tár is her seventh nomination and she has two wins (for Woody's Blue Jasmine in this category and for The Aviator's Kate Hepburn in the Supporting category). Had she not won an Oscar, or not won Best Actress before, I'd say she was due the way Glenn Close is way overdue. With a couple Oscars at home already I don't suspect Tár, while a good performance of course, is so overpowering that it will get her a third. But obviously barring getting hit by a bus she is going to be back here many more times. She won't ever catch Meryl Streep's number of nominations (quite possibly nobody ever will), but she will surely get into double digits.




The one who may well win chiefly because she hasn't won before is Michelle Williams. This is her fifth nomination (Blue Valentine and My Week with Marilyn as Best Actress and Brokeback Mountain and Manchester by the Sea as Supporting). She plays essentially Steven Spielberg's eccentric mother in his thinly-veiled The Fabelmans, and while she is good and has a couple showy scenes it hardly feels like a meaty lead role and after all the impressive work she has done, including unnominated turns in Kelly Reichardt's Wendy & Lucy, Meek's Cutoff, and Certain Women, it would be a little hollow to win Best Actress for a solid but not-much-more role. Yet stranger things have happened.




Speaking of playing Marilyn Monroe, while the film itself was incredibly divisive (and understandably so) you can't really fault Ana de Armas or her performance. I can't and her fellows in the Acting Branch of the Academy didn't, anyway. I like what director Andrew Dominik was going for in Blonde, even though I don't think he hit his target very often. But I was mesmerized by de Armas, and not just because she is nude for seemingly about a third of the flick. The Cuban-born beauty seemed to come out of nowhere when she flickered seductively in Blade Runner 2049 (2017) and then shined so very brightly at the center of Knives Out (2019). At only thirty-four she should continue to see her star rise. Blonde is so derided by its detractors I can't see her winning, but I will not be shocked to see her back again as a nominee more than once in the next couple decades.

And for those keeping score at home, that makes two actresses who have been Oscar nominated for playing Marilyn (Williams & de Armas) while Monroe herself was never nominated.




And speaking of controversy, the brouhaha over Andrea Riseborough's nomination was much ado about nada. For those who have now taken the time to find and watch To Leslie there is no doubt it is an Oscar-worthy performance. Playing a Texas woman who once won a couple hundred thousand dollars in the lottery only to blow it all on booze and excess over the years, alienating her friends and most crucially her son, Riseborough is sad and tragic and absolutely magnetic. The performance is all the more impressive if you are just learning that Andrea is English. Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) was probably the first time I noticed her and you may have seen her in Battle of the Sexes (2017), The Death of Stalin (2017), Mandy (2018), The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021), or last year's disappointing Amsterdam (2022). She is heartbreaking and fully committed in To Leslie. While she has long odds of actually winning her odds of even making the Best Actress cut seemed long, too.




Michelle Yeoh is somehow sixty-years-old and started acting in film almost forty years ago! After becoming an action star in Hong Kong she hit the international stage, first as a Bond girl in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and then in Ang Lee's worldwide phenomenon Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). Since then she has moved back and forth between the Asian and English film businesses and I am sure had no idea that agreeing to do The Daniels' weird, funky little script would land her with her first Oscar nomination. It may lead to a win, both for the fun and dexterity of her work in Everything Everywhere All at Once and for her long career. If she were to win Malaysia-born Yeoh would be only the third Asian woman to win an acting award, following Youn Yuh-jung (Korean) for Minari a couple years back and Miyoshi Umeki (Japanese) for Sayonara (1957), both in the Supporting Actress category.

This is a really strong group, but Blanchett is a fave and we don’t get to see her absolutely kill it often enough.

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