Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1995

The Contenders:

Meryl Streep: The Bridges of Madison County
Sharon Stone: Casino
Susan Sarandon: Dead Man Walking (winner)
Elisabeth Shue: Leaving Las Vegas
Emma Thompson: Sense and Sensibility

What’s Missing

There are some great performances from this year. I don’t cover Supporting Actress (or Actor) on this blog, but I’ve got a couple of performances I’d love and want to mention here even if they don’t belong as lead performances. These include the always-lovely Glenne Headly, who was the class of Mr. Holland’s Opus. It also includes the badass Angela Bassett performance in Strange Days. I don’t really think that Marina Zudina in Mute Witness belongs here, but I just wanted to mention her, because it’s a better movie than most would think. Oscar’s particular proclivities kept both Holly Hunter and Sigourney Weaver in Copycat out of the running. Oscar snobbery also left out any serious consideration for Alicia Silverstone in Clueless. Julia Ormond holds her own against Greg Kinnear and Harrison Ford in Sabrina, and while the movie is a bit fluffy, she’s great in it. I love Julie Delpy in Before Sunrise as well. The biggest miss for me is Julianne Moore in Safe.

Weeding through the Nominees

5. I like Meryl Streep. I feel like I have to say that when I’m going to put her last. The problem with The Bridges of Madison County is, as I said in the review, that there’s not much for her to do aside from put on another accent and look wistful. It’s a fine performance—it is Meryl Streep, after all, but it’s also not that special. There’s not much for her to do here. There are times when it seems like she takes up a nomination spot because everyone feels like she’s supposed to. This is one of those times.

4. The rest of these positions are difficult for me to place, because Oscar did at least a creditable job with the nominations for this year. I don’t have a huge objection to Susan Sarandon’s win for Dead Man Walking, but I simply like the other three performances more. There’s also the reality that she’s up against Sean Penn doing some of his best work, and while she is compelling, she’s not always the most compelling person on the screen. That I don’t hate her win and still put her in fourth is saying something.

3. I genuinely feel guilty every time I put someone below a top spot for this year, and now it’s Emma Thompson’s turn. Of these five actresses, Thompson is almost certainly my favorite, and I love this performance from her. Sense and Sensibility comes with a lot of good performances, though, and while Thompson’s might be the best, it isn’t by much. Thompson did win an Oscar for this movie—for the screenplay. That’s exactly the Oscar she should have won, so I have no real complaints here.

2. No one would ever mistake me for a Sharon Stone apologist, but I can’t really think of anything I would change about her performance in Casino. She’s a surprise in this role, and good enough that I’m not sure I can seriously think of someone else I’d want to see in it. In a lesser year, I wouldn’t think twice about giving her the Oscar, and she wouldn’t be a terrible choice for this year. She doesn’t quite get to the top of the nominations for me, but the fact that I didn’t immediately recoil from her performance is notable.

1. This gives me Elisabeth Shue at the top of the nominations, and I think I’m okay with that. The only thing I don’t love about this role and performance is that it always feels like a cliché when someone gets nominated for a role that is any sort of cognate with the “hooker with a heart of gold” trope. Shue makes it work, though, and stands up to one of the best performances in Nicolas Cage’s career. In an open field, Shue doesn’t quite get the win from me, but limited to the actual nominations, I’m giving her the statue.

My Choice

I’m probably alone in thinking that Julianne Moore should have won an Oscar in 1995, but Safe is such a brutal movie and it depends entirely on how believable she is in the role. This is a horror movie without a monster, and Moore needs to be the focus of everything, has to be vulnerable and make us feel vulnerable at the same time. It’s demanding in every frame, and Moore gives it everything. I’ll die on this hill, and I’ll do it proudly.

Final Analysis