The legendary, enigmatic, and so, so gorgeous Vivien Leigh would've been 99 years old today, and you know what that means? If she were alive now, she'd be spending her 60th (or so) year knowing she'd given the two most respected performances in cinematic history. As Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind and Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, the brazen Ms. Leigh redefined the standard for tour de force portrayals and presented infinitely dimensional characters who are still fun to talk (and theorize) about today. This brings me to a poll question whose answers are revealing in the best possible way: What are your personal favorite movie performances?
The rule is, you have to pick 10. Not 11, not nine. And in a brief description, explain why. Here's my personal tenpack of fabulous movie performances.
1. Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire
Part of Vivien Leigh's power in Streetcar is how bizarre her characterization feels in contrast to naturalistic Marlon Brando as the monstrous Stanley Kowalski, but nonetheless, there are layers and layers of weirdness, pretense, delusion, reckoning, pity, ferocity, and psychological wreckage to Leigh's portrayal of Blanche DuBois. The role nearly ruined Leigh, but it continues to intrigue me. (Yay?)
2. Jane Fonda in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
I love Jane Fonda's emergence as the hardened, self-aware leading lady of the late '60s and '70s. She was the face of unflinching feminism in movies, and her rawness and ultimate devastation in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? is staggering.
3. Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass
I love teenage melodrama done right. Natalie Wood may be the least compelling part of Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story, but in Splendor in the Grass, she's urgent, crazed, hormonal, passionate, possessed, and real. Young Warren Beatty's beauty is probably enough to provoke all of those things.
4. Sandy Dennis in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
I bring up Sandy and her drunken nuttiness in this movie all the time, but ultimately what I love about this performance is the sheer essence of Dennis' weirdness. If actors are musical instruments, Meryl Streep is a Stradivarius, ready to enliven and class up any movie she's in. Glenn Close is something harsher, like an organ. And Sandy Dennis is just a freaky-ass theremin, adding eerieness and kookiness wherever she dances -- like the wind!
5. George Sanders in All About Eve
The opening lines of All About Eve -- narrated with wry detachment by George Sanders as the esteemed theater critic Addison DeWitt -- prepare us for a movie that delivers dynamite characters, brilliant dialogue, and some of the most sophisticated plot machinations ever. And that unmistakable voice; talk about "fire and music"!
6. Ralph Fiennes in Quiz Show
As you might know, I love, love, love game shows. I also love self-impressed aristocrats who are faced with a moral crisis. Quiz Show is a perfect melding of both worlds, as Ralph Fiennes gives a crackling performance as the cheating quiz show contestant Charles Van Doren, a man who ultimately disgraced his literary family and helped tank the '50s quiz show industry with episodes and episodes of correct answers on NBC's Twenty One. You can see all the moral conflict right in those gigantic, unbelievable blue eyes.
7. Grace Kelly in Rear Window
Gorgeous Grace captivates James Stewart, befriends a nosy accomplice in Thelma Ritter, and ultimately puts her life at stake in the fabulous Hitchcock thriller Rear Window. She's touching, bad-ass, and ultimately the nerviest member of the voyeuristic trio. Watch out, Raymond Burr, because Grace's boiling-over feminine intuition is even stronger than yours.
8. Richard Burton in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Surprise! Yet another V. Woolf performance, this one the frantic, self-loathing, contemptuous, hopeless, and often hilarious Richard Burton as freewheeling party host George. Dare you challenge his fatalistic, cutting quips, Monkey Nipples?
9. Elizabeth Hartman in A Patch of Blue
A blind white girl named Selina is abused by her racist mother and befriended by a black passerby -- sounds simple in the abstract, but the captivating Elizabeth Hartman turns the naive, love-deprived Selina into a bursting ray of inspiration and emotionality. Her performance is so guileless that I find it often too painful to bear.
10. Alicia Silverstone in Clueless
The outfits are dated, the lingo is pure '90s, yet no movie of the time holds up like Clueless. The focal point of this hilarious comedy, the fun and vernacular-whipping Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone), is the perfect combination of smart, misguided, cool, approachable, and laugh-out-loud funny. Picture the way she says "I'm totally buggin'." You're already smiling.
Your turn, darlings. Pick your ten!
