As I referenced in the Introduction, Best Actress is a category in which the voter makes no distinction between lead and supporting roles. Instead, you are encouraged to choose your top 10 performances of the year independent of importance or scale. Historically, you have generally chosen lead roles or at least tweener parts where a woman is ostensibly the female lead albeit subjugated a bit by more dominant male roles. Welcome to the Hollywood studio system. 51% of the population is female, but the dudes are better customers on an annual basis, so the industry caters to them much more. This situation is gradually improving over time, but the difference between the strength of the top 10 in this category each year reflects that some years are a lot better than others.

The past year has been tremendous in this regard as your top 10 selections reflect a group that is half lead roles while the other five are integral to the story of their films. In the end, you saw the year the same way that BOP did as well as the Academy, choosing Natalie Portman as the Best Actress. As was the case with BOP voting, yours was a complete blowout. Portman received over twice as many votes as the next best performer, Hailee Steinfeld. This is the largest blowout in the seven year history of the Reader Awards. No prior winner had doubled the closest competitor. Combined with Emma Stone and Jennifer Lawrence, your third and fourth place selections, you agree with BOP on four of the top five in addition to agreeing that Portman was head and shoulders above the rest. Presumably, Michelle Williams wasn’t championed as much since Blue Valentine is a small scale film that has yet to be made available on the home video market as I type this. In short, we agree on the particulars of the top of the Best Actress category this year.



Oddly, the bottom of our selections diverges dramatically. Only Noomi Rapace finishes in the second set of five entries on both lists. Of course, that’s a quirk of the category as you chose this range as the area for quality Supporting Actress performances. You clearly prefer young, imaginary lesbians to older ones (a shocking turn of events) as you chose Mila Kunis for Black Swan while ignoring either of the heralded actresses from The Kids Are All Right. You are not, however, a fan of Hasbians, which is presumably why Mary Elizabeth Winstead didn’t make your list for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. You were also not above the rough look in principal as your love of The Fighter was reflected by passionate support for Amy Adams and Melissa Leo. And, like me, you prefer your women to be a bit crazy, which is why Marion Cotillard earned a spot among your nominees.

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