Countdown to the Oscars: Top 15 Favourite Best Actress-Winning Performances

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Throughout this month, I've decided to do a series of Oscar-related articles in anticipation to tonight's 89th Academy Awards ceremony, which I am going to see live on television. Yesterday, I presented you my top 15 favourite Best Actor-winning performances, so today I thought I would do the same, but for Best Actress winners instead. As I have said before, please bear in mind that this is my own personal opinion, which of course is limited to the films I have seen so far. 
 

15. Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce (1945) 

Mildred Pierce (Joan Crawford): I was always in the kitchen. I felt as though I'd been born in a kitchen and lived there all my life, except for the few hours it took to get married.
 
 

14. Joan Fontaine in Suspicion (1941)

Lina McLaidlaw Aysgarth (Joan Fontaine): I must go now or I'll be late to luncheon. Anyway, if my father saw me come in both late and beautiful, he might have a stroke.
 

13. Elizabeth Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) 

Martha (Elizabeth Taylor): I'm loud and I'm vulgar, and I wear the pants in the house because somebody's got to, but I am not a monster. I'm not!
 
 

12. Olivia de Havilland in To Each His Own (1946) 

Jody Norris (Olivia de Havilland): When you've been wildly and deeply in love, Mac, you don't stop loving just because somebody dies. Certainly not if there's a child. It's the same love.
 
 

11. Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side (2009) 

Beth (Rhoda Griffis): You're changing that boy's life.
Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock): No, he's changing mine. 
 

10. Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind (1939) 

Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh): As God as my witness, I shall never go hungry again.
 

9. Liza Minnelli in Cabaret (1972) 

Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli): That's me, darling. Unusual places, unusual love affairs. I am a most strange and extraordinary person.

 

8. Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night (1934) 

Ellen Andrews (Claudette Colbert): I proved once and for all that the limb is mightier than the thumb.
 
 

7. Kate Winslet in The Reader (2008) 

Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet): It doesn't matter what I feel. It doesn't matter what I think. The dead are still dead.
 
 

6. Brie Larson in Room (2015) 

Joy Newsome (Brie Larson): I'm sorry that I'm not nice anymore, but you know what? Maybe if your voice saying «be nice» hadn't been in my head, then maybe I wouldn't have helped the guy with the sick dog!
 


5. Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Lining Playbook (2015) 

Tiffany Maxwell (Jennifer Lawrence): Humanity is just nasty and there's no silver lining.
 

 

4. Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose (2007)

Édith Piaf (Marion Cotillard): I can't? Then what's the point of being Édith Piaf?
 


3. Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday (1953) 

Princess Ann (Audrey Hepburn): I've never been alone with a man before, even with my dress on. With my dress off, it's MOST unusual.
 


2. Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda (1948)


1. Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday (1950) 

Billie Dawn (Judy Holliday): [My father] always used to say, «Never do nothing you wouldn't want printed on the front page of The New York Times.»
 


And there you have it. These are, as of now, my top 15 favorite Best Actress-winning performances. Did I name some of your favorites? Were you surprised by my choices?

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