99 days til Oscar - let's get drunk
Saturday, November 2, 2019 at 1:31PM
NATHANIEL R in Cate Blanchett, Julia, Leaving Las Vegas, The Lost Weekend, Tilda Swinton, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, booze

The number 99 always makes us think of that roadtrip sing-a-long "99 bottles of beer on the wall" which naturally leads to the question... what's the best booze-soaked performance of all time? 

In recent years our answer would totally be Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine (2013) who justly careened right into her second Oscar. Screen drunks are actually rather commonly beloved by the Academy factoring into many Oscar-nominated roles but the list of winners is shorter. After the jump a (complete?) list of completely inebriated Oscar wins. How would you rank them? 

Ray Milland, The Lost Weekend (1945)

Claire Trevor, Key Largo (1948) 

Dorothy Malone, Written on the Wind (1956)

Lee Marvin, Cat Ballou (1965)

Sandy Dennis, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

Elizabeth Taylor, Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

Dianne Weist, Bullets Over Broadway (1994)

Nicolas Cage, Leaving Las Vegas (1995)

James Coburn, Affliction (1999)

Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart (2009)

Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine (2013)

 Tilda Swinton in Julia (2009) -- our gold medalist that year -- would've looked so perfect on that list but, alas, she wasn't even nominated.

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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