The Best of a Bad Lot: Oscar Winning Actresses in Bad Movies
Tuesday, December 4, 2018 at 10:00PM 
The shade of it all... the 1974 ceremony for the Best Actresses of 1973 (L-R from the bottom corner) Marsha Mason, Ellen Burstyn, Joanne Woodward, Glenda Jackson, Barbra Streisand
Christmas really brings out my contrarian side, and since it's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year (awards season), permit me to be a humbug. Those who truly appreciate the Oscars understand that sometimes it is about the politics and not the performance. Academy voters are not infallible, but we shouldn't underestimate their other important role in taking the cultural temperature to find out what and who was hot in cinema in any given year. Without getting into a discussion of who did and didn't deserve their award, there are definitely some great female performances honored in films that may otherwise not have been so deserving. Some potentially controversial opinions after the jump...
Glenda Jackson in A Touch of Class (1973)
I longed for years to see this, described to me once as "a film about a feminist who falls in love with a married man." I expected a searing 1970s socio-political satire with an indomitable Glenda Jackson realizing that love is but a bourgeois sham! Instead, A Touch of Class is a film made by Brut (yes, the cologne), has all the appeal of a failed sitcom pilot and stinks as bad as cheap perfume. Time has not been good to this one, but there's no faulting Glenda as she escapes unscathed clutching her Oscar, even after making the odd rape joke. Glenda's Oscar clip in which she asks George Segal to get out distills some of her much needed gravitas. At least we have the ending, as Vicki Alessio knows that he is never going to leave his wife. And if you need further proof that this win caused a bit of upset, just look at Marsha, Ellen and Joanne.
Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady (2011)
I hope that The Iron Lady is on a screenwriting course somewhere, as a case study on how plot structure can ruin a film. Taking two insufficently developed stories: A woman with dementia who happens to be named Margaret Thatcher, and another starring Meryl Streep in drag, in a clip reel of the actual Margaret Thatcher and shoving them together in a quest to win Meryl an Oscar. When the material around the performance is so flimsy it really makes a performance (or in this case, an impression?) stand out. But there are defintely moments to enjoy: the creation of Maggie T from her pearls to her voice, to the scene in which she has fully become a vampire and devours her cabinet one by one. But The Iron Lady uses the excuse of excising the majority of Thatcher's political life to focus on the "human story", when really the scenes of dementia offer Meryl little to do other than wear some of J. Roy Helland's delightful make-up. Issues like the miners' strike and the IRA zip by, compacting two lives and a myriad of events into 1 hour and 45 minutes. And somehow even that feels too long.
Frances McDormand in Three Bilboards Outside Ebbing Missouri (2017)
Come February when McDormand appears to announce the award for Best Actor, we will sadly be reminded of the dreck that won her her second Oscar. There isn't a single person out there who has any ill-will to Frances McDormand, but even when she is polishing her awards, you know her one for Fargo shines brighter. Three Billboards is a messy, noisy, at times incoherent and ultimately empty story. Martin McDonagh's creation resembled neither Missouri nor reality, and took the very strong premise of a mother's sense of retribution for her daughter's killing and polluted it with unlikeable sidekicks, and violence for the hell of it, well... because McDonagh.
Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice (1982)
Wait. Before you accuse me of dragging a Holocaust movie, just when was the last time you saw Sophie's Choice? While there are moments where Meryl is technically brilliant, for example, speaking German with a Polish accent, these are the bits you remember, when in actuality, Sophie's Choice is grating three-way love story where they don't even get it on! Even Michael Schulman can't defend this one. Our lead is Peter MacNicol as the deeply annoying young writer Stingo, living in a boarding house one floor beneath the sensual and sensitive Sophie and her boyfriend Nathan, played by Kevin Kline. Sophie's Choice was Kline's first film and you can tell: he's acting for the back row, broader than the movie screen itself. These losers teeter on the edge of a group thing plenty of times, but of course nothing comes of it, leaving Sophie to reveal what happened to her deep into the second half of this long film. We know the Academy is a worthy body, but it was the HFPA who nominated her for Death Becomes Her. Just sayin'.
There can't only be four! Make your case in the comments below, and be an equal opportunities contrarian.
Reader Comments (77)
It really must be haunted on Meryl after months of reading about her every performance. First of all, Sophie’s Choice is the Gold standard of acting. Sure, her costars were flimsy, but what is the Gold Standard, The Blind Side? The Iron Lady was undeserving, but at least it blocked Category Fraud, Viola Davis, who should’ve won Supporting in The Help. ( Thanks, Harvey),
The Reader is unwatchable. How Winslet ever won for this mess instead of her electrifying performance in Revolutionary Road is beyond me. ( Thanks, Harvey),
Does anybody go out of their way and really Want to watch Erin Brockovich, Monster’s Ball, The Accused or Dangerous?
"Reese Witherspoon, Brie Larson, Sandra Bullock and Jennifer Lawrence were all just barely adequate in my opinion. Even Emma Stone just squeaked by on charm."
I would say they were all 5 of them were more than adequate - all perfectly fine performances - but yeah, none of them particularly screamed "OSCAR!" now did they.
Thank u for calling out that PIECE OF SHIT "Three Billboards"! As a product of "small-town Amerricah," I couldn't have been more offended by that foreigner's small-minded view of rural American life. It was nothing resembling reality and only used to trigger some current-day realness with Ferguson. Just utter dreck. It's a testament to McDormand's immense talent that I can even look at her now without being disgusted thinking about that film she was in and so "proud" of.
The beginning of this post also makes me so very sad as it reminds me for the upteenth time that Marsha Mason doesn't have an Oscar. Sigh.
No comment😡😡😡😡
THE READER! 'Nuff said. Garbage film. Winslet's worst performance. And yes, I sat through "Labor Day" and "Wonder Wheel." If only she had won for "Revolutionary Road" instead.
Meryl didn't need to be on this list twice.
Say what you will about Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, but Frances McDormand is *by far* the best thing about it. It seems correct to have her the recipient of two Oscars (not to mention an Emmy and a Tony). She's one of the best actresses of our lifetime, and she doesn't get the parts she deserves much of the time.
Erin Brockovich is a great movie with a terrific leading performance at its center. I definitely wouldn't lump Julia Roberts in with Jodie Foster in The Accused (meh) or Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side (blah). And we all know Bette Davis' win for Dangerous was really for Of Human Bondage the year prior.
Yeah, Erin Brockovich is the type of movie that I can watch whenever it is on cable. That Best Actress win has aged very well - and I think Bullock's and Lawrence's have aged well also. (Shrug.) The Academy usually goes wrong when it gives Oscars to minor films that no one cares about in the first place.
@Seán - Theron does paycheck movies like The Fast and the Furious ∞ and Snow White and the Huntsman so that she can afford to do films like Tully and Young Adult (or passion projects like Atomic Blonde). I'll take that calculus if that's what it takes to get great movies made.
Of the Best Actress winners in flat-out bad movies, my four easily are:
- Luise Rainer, The Good Earth
- Susan Hayward, I Want to Live!
- Glenda Jackson, A Touch of Class
- Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Runners up are:
- Bette Davis, Dangerous
- Glenda Jackson, A Touch of Class
- Meryl Streep, Sophie's Choice
- Jessica Lange, Blue Sky
- Kate Winslet, The Reader
- Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side
I don't hate Butterfield 8, like some, and it's far more enjoyable than the titles on this list.
I love 'Sophie's Choice' - even outside of Meryl's work. Though her performance certainly elevates it.
Really late to this:
1) Since I was actually watching the Oscars that year, let me tell you, Glenda Jackson was a strange out of nowhere choice for the audience too. The buzz was mainly between Streisand fans and Joanne Woodward fans. "Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams" was the high brow, critics choice and Streisand was the more mainstream favourite. I'm sure Glenda Jackson herself was astonished. (A split vote which allowed the dark horse win is probably the answer)
2) I will defend the Meryl Streep win for "Sophie's Choice" any day, it may not be a great film but her performance was a knockout.
3) More egregious wins were Sandra Bullock, Grace Kelly (over Judy Garland !!!), Jessica Tandy, Brie Larson, Jennifer Lawrence, and Jessica Lange.
I disagree on 3 Billboards. That movie was supposed to be a farce, not some sort of realistic portrayal of rural American life. Of course, it was problematic. But bad? No way.
If anyone writes Jane Fonda in Klute I'll burn this place to the ground.
Seems to be picking on Streep here - 2 placements out of 4 slots when there are several other Oscar winning performances in terrible films as noted by the commenters here.
This particular post seems to serve as click-bait for all the Streep haters. It's obvious Streep does not belong on the list twice. Sophie's Choice is a phenomenal movie with Streep giving the greatest performance ever captured on film.
"Butterfield 8" is a camp classic.
Ah currently watching blind side as we speak ... terrible film . Awful supporting performances covered in feel good one note nothingness and whil bullock did not deserve an Oscar... she is fully committed , the only interesting thing on screen and does create a character you want to root for ... should not be a best actress winner for it.. but there has been plenty worse.. the film is shite but Sandra’s pretty movie star in it
Streep is a GREAT actress, but Sophie's Choice was not a great movie. However, her performance was transcendant.
If I've read this correctly we're talking deserving winners in subpar films.
In that aspect I agree about Glenda (though I like A Touch of Class I agree that its badly dated and was no great shakes to begin with but she really makes something of her role.) and Meryl in Sophie's Choice (she's transcendent in a well-intentioned but flawed film) but not The Iron Lady where her arch impersonation is just as crummy as the atrocious film it's contained in, I think its the worst thing she's ever done that I've seen. As far as Frances McDormand she was strong in the film but not necessarily win worthy, the movie ramshackle.
Otherwise my list would comprise:
Marie Dressler in Min and Bill-She tears at your heart while the movie tears at you patience.
Luise Rainer in The Good Earth-Damning the movie with faint praise it's better than Dragon Seed. But what isn't? It's still a trial to get through but even under heavy makeup Rainer is deeply real and moving.
Shirley Booth in Come Back, Little Sheba-The film is a stagebound study in 50's angst and ennui that feels prosaic now but Shirley's depth of emotion remains touching and vivid.
Ingrid Bergman in Anastasia-Another film I really like despite it rather clunky structure. Ingrid finds many ways to make her troubled character live on screen amongst the sometimes improbable plot turns.
Charlize Theron in Monster-I found the film grim, draggy and messy but Theron delivers a mesmerizing piece of work.
Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose-while my vote would have gone to Julie Christie this year there is no denying that Marion is stupendous in a movie that plays like a highlights reel of the talented performer's life.
I really don't like Blue Jasmine, actually.
Picture this: there are only four actresses listed here out of which Meryl Streep takes up two slots, one of the roles many would consider a masterclass in acting in an average movie. Instead of quoting critics who found the movie good to less-than-average but NOT BAD, the writer opted to cite the author of Meryl's biography who begged to differ. If you also read carefully, you'll realize that the writer even threw shades at that performance. So the writing here says more about the writer - his biased, tunnel vision perspectives than the movie or performances themselves.
La Vie En Rose remains one of the worst films of the 21st century for me. But hot damn Marion Cotillard earned her Oscar.
1974: Babs should have won...or maybe Mason but just because I like the idea she could be an Oscar winner and for the other three noms I think it's even harder to imagine her winning on Keaton, Field and even the over-rewarded Hepburn
Lol some shit choices.
As in the decision to make these your choices.
Happy New Year tho.
Brave! Defending Blind Side, much love Sean
"Sandra Bullock’s THE BLIND SIDE is the most egregious of Oscar errors in its most consistently infuriating category, Best Actress (subpar performance, terrible movie). Only a Lady Gaga/A STAR IS BORN win could be worse."
Oh please, Gaga is far more impactful and memorable in her film than Sandra was in "The Blind Side".
The worst from each decade:
1927/28 - 1939... Mary Pickford's grating Southern accent and boop-boop-be-doop vocal delivery in the dire Coquette (28/29) takes some beating, especially in the scene where she goes windmilling through the woods like a demented refugee from an acid party, but the very worst is First Lady of the American Thea-tah Helen Hayes in The Sin of Madelon Claudet ('31/'32). She's fine up to a point, but when she ages into an old crone (weirdly, the action of the film only extends from the war to the late '20s, but Hayes is suddenly stooped and hobbling and ninety) the jig is well and truly up: this is a Display of Thea-tah Prowess meant to have audiences weeping respectful tears and lighting votive candles in reverent astonishment. It's hard to actually hate Hayes, but.... well I did, and wished all manner of ills upon her.
1940-1949... Loretta Young in The Farmer's Daughter ('47) is the real crime here; but why is blank-eyed Jennifer Jones simpering her way unstoppably through The Song of Bernadette ('43) given such a free ride lo these many decades later? This is one of the most shameful examples of using a completely unequipped 'actor' precisely because their lack of craft is somehow meant to reflect glory on the film for 'truthfulness' and lack of affectation. Ironically you'd have to trudge many a muddy mile to find a performance as unctuously affected as Jones', a feat she actually improved on the following year as a spit-swishing, dimple-twiddling cretin in Since You Went Away.
1950-1959... Ready your brickbats - I come to rain calumnies upon one of the most revered Oscar winners of the era, beloved Shirley Booth in Come Back Little Sheba ('52). Unless the point of the film is that Little Sheba has gone out and shot herself behind the garage because of the irritating, sobbing, slipper-flapping slob who owns her, I can't see a scintilla of redeeming value in either this film or the hideously self-congratulatory performance given by Booth. The best I can say for her here is that she should have dropped the last two letters in her surname.
1960-1969... And here's another sacred cow ripe for the butcher's slab - Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie ('69). The film is a failure both as an adaptation of the Muriel Spark novel and the Jay Presson Allen stage play; but at least a good performance in the focal role might go some way to addressing the more threatening undercurrents of the Brodie persona. What we get, however, is Dame Maggie up to her old tricks, fluting, flouncing and cavorting about like an unstrung marionette, and all but turning cartwheels of delight at her own comedic deliciousness. She ends up being the visual equivalent of the egregious Rod McKuen song that is glooped over the credits like so much molasses. The only danger from this Brodie is a sudden and cataclysmic onslaught of dental cavities among the audience.
1970-1979... Interestingly, the era's two finest screen actresses, Glenda Jackson and Jane Fonda, won the decades first two Best Actress Oscars - for Women in Love ('70) and Klute ('71) respectively - and then were the only actors to repeat, for A Touch of Class ('73) and Coming Home ('78). Actually, yes, there was a third - Jason Robards in '76 and '77, but his example supports the point I'm making. Which is that their repeat Oscars were among the least deserved in history, while their originals remain among the finest. A Touch of Class is unbearably bad: smug, unfunny, shoddily assembled and bewilderingly popular at the box office, but even if Jackson shouldn't have got anything for the film except a sharp smack she goes some way towards making it at least palatable while she's onscreen. Fonda, however, all but kamikazes in Coming Home, deciding that in order to play an ordinary, submissive wife slowly having her consciousnesss raised (courtesy of cunnilingus) she has to ditch everything she'd ever learned in 20 years of acting, right down to the final confrontation scene which she acts like a confused kid flunking a karate examination. What's with the hands, Fonda? And a 'boring' character should never, ever elicit a boring performance from the actor playing her.
1980 - 1989... Sally Field in Places in the Heart ('84). Well we did like you, Sally, we really really liked you.... in Norma Rae ('79)! This is Sally's bid for Screen Immortality, a kind of Scarlett O'Hara of the Depression refracted through the new Fonda Less-Interesting-Is-More-Virtuous technique that didn't even work for the intrinsically interesting Fonda. Why Field attempted it is anyone's guess; what we get is a lot of pudding-faced pouting, and huffing and puffing, and some sad stares to season it all. At the end you expect her to have rolled enough dough to supply Dominos for the next two decades, but all you get is a lot of Heartland heavy breathing in a prim sunhat and floral frock. How this didn't torpedo Sally's career but actually won her a second Oscar is an explanation that the Reagan Era is best positioned to provide.
1990 - 1999... Kathy Bates is fun but seriously overrated in Misery ('90); Helen Hunt in As Good As it Gets ('97) justifies the movie's title (on the movie's own impoverished terms), but is really just Jackson-in-A-Touch-of-Class Mark 2. The real hideousness of a generally horrible Oscar decade is primping princess Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love ('98), and why people were falling over themselves to give this malnourished automaton with her wind-up smirks and simpers an acting award. Paltrow has already shot so far into the Stratosphere of the Stunningly Deluded and Unlikeable for me to cut her some slack here for humanity's sake, but.... geez Louise, if you weren't vomiting into your popcorn watching her smugly mincing performance in this jumped-up pantomime were you even awake? Or breathing? Somewhere in the world there's an Oscar stoically willing its own complete disintegration because of the words engraved upon its plinth: Best Actress Gwyneth Paltrow Shakespeare in Love. Have pity.