Best Actress 2003

Charlize Theron as hard-living but quietly idealistic street hooker and eventual murderer Aileen Wuornos in Patty Jenkins’ “Monster”.

“I’m not a bad person. I’m a real good person. Right?”

Angela Bettis as socially awkward body part-obsessed veterinary assistant May Dove Canady, yearning for perfection in a world in which she’s grown up labeled ‘weird’ in Lucky McKee’s “May”. This film finds potency in Angela Bettis’s performance alone. She is incredible here and absolutely Oscar-worthy despite the film’s relative obscurity. You will feel for May no matter her delusions and violence. Bettis creates a character that is so vivid it lives even outside of the film, she is sad and lonely, projecting her insecurities outward, finding perfect parts to love in other people instead of the whole. She is unable to accept their imperfections, but through Bettis we watch May fail to even realize this is because she cannot accept her own. May is somewhat empty, a possible psychopath desperate to feel, using beauty as a means toward human connection and gratification, then hopeless at the conclusion that not even this will suffice. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all have the comfort of perfection? The film in a way allows this, as that is as far as May will get.

“So many pretty parts and no pretty wholes.”

Naomi Watts as recovered addict and now suburban mom and active swimmer Cristina Peck, shell-shocked and broken by the tragedy of losing her husband and two daughters in a hit and run in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “21 Grams”. Cristina is left feeling empty by loss and turns back to drugs and alcohol to dull her pain, until she finds herself unable to resist the human compassion of the man who received her husband’s heart in a transplant. She lashes out at this with rage and guilt for seeing a prospect to not be so numb, and is forced to confront the value of her life and the lives of those around her— including the perpetrator of the hit and run. It is scary to have to feel. Drugs give us a chance to not feel. In order for Cristina to truly recover, she learns she has to confront feeling again, and in the hardest way possible, to find any self-worth at all.

“Katie died with red shoelaces on. She hated red shoelaces. And she kept asking me to get her some blue ones. And I never got her the blue ones. She was wearing those fucking red shoelaces when she was killed!”

Scarlett Johansson as neglected young wife Charlotte, artistic but disillusioned in Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation”.

“Let’s never come here again because it would never be as much fun.”

Uma Thurman as singularly vengeful expert assassin Beatrix Kiddo (The Bride) in Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill: Volume 1”.

“Wiggle your big toe.”

Diane Keaton as effervescent turtleneck-wearing playwright Erica Barry in Nancy Meyers’ “Something’s Gotta Give”.

“Do you know that I’ve written this, but I never really got it?”

Evan Rachel Wood as prickly, destructive teenager Tracy Freeland in Catherine Hardwicke’s “Thirteen”.

“Hit me. I’m serious. I can’t feel anything. Hit me!”

Keisha Castle-Hughes as strong-willed Māori adolescent Paikea ‘Pai’ Apirana, fighting years of tradition to become the next chief of her tribe in Niki Caro’s “Whale Rider”.

“My name is Paikea Apirana, and I come from a long line of chiefs.”

Oksana Akinshina as abandoned child and teenage sex trafficking victim Lilya Michailova, anguished, enraged and naive in Lukas Moodysson’s “Lilya 4-Ever”.

“I’m not your property. Think you can buy me? You can’t buy me. You can’t buy my heart and soul.”

Samantha Morton as warm but grieving mother Sarah Sullivan in Jim Sheridan’s “In America”.