This year's Best Actress category is filled with variety. The films run the gamut from big blockbuster to smaller releases and sleepers, and the nominees themselves prove to be a nice mix of the popular and the lesser-known as well.

For our winner, though, we elect to go with the popular choice this year. Reese Witherspoon took the role of June Carter in Walk the Line and made it completely hers. In fact, she was positively resplendent in the film, as she did a remarkable job of portraying a woman whose love for a troubled man encouraged her to help him into recovery from drug addiction and into a lifelong relationship. While Witherspoon has often been considered one of the most talented actresses of her generation, Walk the Line is the first film that has really allowed her to take a role with real meat and exhibit her significant talent. Also, when we consider that she played her own musical instruments and sang all of June's songs in the movie, it does make her portrayal all the more impressive.

Although she is nominated in the supporting category for the Academy Awards, the honest evaluation is that Rachel Weisz's part in The Constant Gardener is really more suited to the lead actress classification. And her performance as the activist Tessa Quayle is the best of her career. She is soft and elegant when needed, but as someone fighting for the rights of Africans, the character also can be tough and abrasive. She and co-star Ralph Fiennes have nice chemistry, though it also feels uncertain at times, which is actually important for the unraveling of the story. New doors should certainly be opening for her thanks to her work in this film.

You know what task is hard for an actress? It's when the scene calls for you to have ridiculously out-of-nowhere rough sex with your significant other, fake an earth-shattering orgasm, then storm off as if you hate the lout. Completing this assignment without causing the audience to scoff derisively is more than enough justification for placement on this list. Of course, Maria Bello does much more than that in A History of Violence. She is pitch perfect in portraying a confused woman who realizes her significant other is not at all the man she thought him to
be. We're talking mob family member different. Bello somehow manages to prove her character hangs on to her dignity despite falling victim to such emotional abuse. This is one of the most unique acting challenges of 2006, and more than worthy as our third place selection.

Naomi Watts has received our attention at the Calvins in past years. She won in 2003 for her starring role in The Ring, and finished in the top five the previous year for her wonderful work in Mulholland Drive. This year, the challenges presented to her were massive. And I mean massive as in 25 feet tall. Yes, Watts was asked to film the majority of her scenes with a great big CGI ape, and it is to her immense credit that she was able to do so with an impressive degree of realism. Director Peter Jackson was asking audiences to believe that a beautiful woman like Watts' Ann Darrow would develop a close friendship and even something close to a romantic relationship with a beast that has proven deadly to fellow members of the human race. Yet, she pulls it off to the point that it is nearly impossible to watch the finale without crying. It's kind of a shame that King Kong wasn't the kind of Titanic blockbuster many were forecasting it to be, because it is the "chemistry" between Watts and Kong that carries the tale, and it's almost every bit as charming as anything that happened between Leo and Kate.

We've loved her in films like Bend It Like Beckham, Pirates of the Caribbean and Love Actually, but this year marks the first time that Keira Knightley has received any votes in our actress categories. Her portrayal of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride & Prejudice requires her to be a little bit plain and to believably present an intelligent reader of novels (though it's somewhat important to remark that during this era, novels were considered a little bit silly and frivolous). Knightley has a delightful chemistry with her Mr. Darcy, Matthew Macfadyen, and she also plays well off co-stars such as Rosamund Pike, Jenna Malone and Donald Sutherland. Given the fact that Jane Austen fans (including myself) can be a picky bunch, it's to Knightley's credit that the film has been so well-received.

BOP loves Felicity Huffman. We're talking undying love, the kind that carries over even when she does movies like Raising Helen. Our love blossomed as she played the neurotic but successful Dana Whitaker on Aaron Sorkin's Sports Night, and it has continued to grow through the highs and lows of Desperate Housewives, where she has finally started to receive her due recognition. Even though she is now becoming a big-time actress, she still went the daring route as she accepted a role as a pre-operative, male-to-female transsexual in the indie road trip film Transamerica. Though the movie itself was uneven, her performance stands out as one that sets the standard for excellence in 2005.

Claire Danes is an actress who really loves her craft. A woman who harbors ambitions of working alongside the Coen brothers and Spike Jonze, she has an indie sensibility and a quiet, subtle talent. In Shopgirl, she plays Mirabelle, a young woman who has moved from a small east coast town to Los Angeles, where she hopes her artistic talent will propel her forward into the spotlight. In the meantime, though, she is employed at an upscale department store in the women's accessories department, selling gloves and other fancy frills. She becomes involved with a much older man (Steve Martin), and the relationship is only doomed to end in heartbreak. She is a delightful romantic lead, displaying vulnerability and intellect. Danes is one of the best young actresses in the business, and we await her next project with great anticipation.

It's been a wild year for Angelina Jolie. After early rumors that she was the reason for the breakup of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston's marriage, Jolie and Pitt lit up the screen in the action-packed, hyper-kinetic Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Of course, their alleged romance then turned out to be real, which made the natural sparks between the duo that much more understandable. No matter what the role is, Jolie always acquits herself well onscreen, with her stunning looks and impeccable delivery setting the standard.

Dame Judi Dench is one of the grand performers working in the business, and her presence in a film always demands notice. In the charming Mrs. Henderson Presents, she is utterly winning as the woman who takes a respectable (but struggling) theater and turns it into a moneymaker thanks to the introduction of a little nudity. Finally, Q'Orianka Kilcher is the final entrant in the top ten thanks to her ability to work alongside such a luminary as Terrence Malick as well as Colin Farrell despite practically no prior experience as an actress.

Actresses on the outside of the top ten looking in are Rachel McAdams (Red Eye), Joan Allen (The Upside of Anger) and Tilda Swinton (The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe). (Kim Hollis/BOP)

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