BEST ACTRESS
ROSAMUND PIKE
THE lovely Ms Pike (pictured) stepped up a notch, profilewise, with her performance in David Fincher’s Gone Girl. Fincher cast her because she wasn’t a globally recognised star, but she is well on the way to becoming one. And she is splendid in Gone Girl, monstrously calculating and manipulative behind that innocent façade, and, for someone so English, Pike is a convincing American.
FELICITY JONES
THE 31-year-old from Birmingham is a good deal less famous than her nearcontemporary Keira Knightley, yet, dare it be said, a fair bit more talented. As Jane Hawking in The Theory Of Everything, she is wonderful, a classic English rose with a stem of pure steel. It takes some doing not to be upstaged by Eddie Redmayne, but she certainly pulls it off.
JULIANNE MOORE
THE 54-year-old has had four Oscar nominations before, and is a clear frontrunner this time. I haven’t yet seen Still Alice, in which she plays a linguistics professor diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s, but she is said to be fantastic. Indeed, her work is rarely anything less than captivatingly watchable. Moreover, she is notably humble in an industry that is not celebrated for its humility.
REESE WITHERSPOON
WITHERSPOON landed a peach of a role in Wild, about an emotionally damaged woman, Cheryl Strayed, trying to heal herself by walking up the West Coast. That was no surprise, since she bought the rights to Strayed’s memoir herself. But she is very good in the part.
HILARY SWANK
THERE are repeated references in The Homesman to the physical plainness of Swank’s character Mary Bee Cuddy, a frontierswoman in 1850s Nebraska. Swank isn’t plain, rather undermining the feminist message of Tommy Lee Jones’ film. What Swank is, however, is an extremely fine actress, in a very meaty role.
AMY ADAMS
IN Tim Burton’s Big Eyes, Adams plays artist Margaret Keane, who is bullied and cajoled by her husband Walter into pretending that he, not she, has painted the wildly popular paintings of huge-eyed waifs. It is the strange but true story of an artistic hoax, and Adams does complete justice to the part, fully embodying both her strength and vulnerability.