2013 Calvin Awards: Best Actress
By David Mumpower
February 21, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The actress who received the largest total of first place votes this year is the winner in the category. I recognize that this sounds like an obvious statement. I can assure you it is not. The actress who finished in second place actually appeared on more ballots. Only two voters excluded this candidate from their voting while four chose not to laud the eventual winner. What all of this means in layman’s terms is that a single point represents the difference between first and second place this year. Conversely, the difference between second and third place equals 86% fewer votes. We had two favorites; while the other candidates selected are all great, the two we love are placed on the highest possible pedestal.
BOP’s selection as the Best Actress of the year is Jennifer Lawrence. At the tender age of 22, Lawrence is already in the conversation for the biggest female superstar in the world. Over the past 18 months, she has played a key role in the reboot of the X-Men franchise, become the face of The Hunger Games and earned her second Academy Award nomination. During the same time frame, she has also starred in three movies that grossed at least $100 million. The three of them in tandem have accrued $1.2 billion in worldwide box office.
Accurately or not, our staff likes to brag that we were earlier than most in recognizing her talent. Lawrence finished second in our voting for Breakthrough Performance in 2011 for her work in Winter’s Bone. She also finished third in this category, Best Actress. Somehow, Winter’s Bone already feels like forever ago now as Lawrence will be Katniss Everdeen from now until the end of time. That is not, however, the performance we have chosen as the best of the year.
In Silver Linings Playbook, Jennifer Lawrence portrays Tiffany Maxwell, who is an unemployed bisexual widow seeking a cure for her loneliness. During an awkward family dinner with her sister, Tiffany believes she has discovered a kindred spirit in Patrizio Solitano Jr. Perhaps she would have better luck in the dating world if she chose men who were not bipolar, but who am I to judge?
Over the course of the movie, Tiffany woos Patrizio via a strange combination of good-hearted deceit and wanton sexuality. There is also quite a bit of dancing thrown in for good measure. Lawrence may wind up inexorably linked to the role of Katniss for the rest of her career, but her better 2012 performance – in fact, THE best 2012 performance is as Tiffany. This character sees what she wants and she goes for it, ex-wife obsessions, meddling parents and strange friends be damned. Rare is the mainstream Hollywood movie that demonstrates the female lead targeting and seducing the male lead yet this is exactly what transpires in Silver Linings Playback. The entirety of the story is so engaging because everyone on planet Earth would fall for Tiffany Maxwell. That is because of Jennifer Lawrence, the Best Actress of 2012.
Jessica Chastain loses a photo finish to wind up in second place in Best Actress. If there is any positive to take from this turn of events, I suggest that it is Chastain’s voting quantity. She receives 10 more votes than the third and fourth place performances combined. In fact, Lawrence and Chastain almost earned as many votes as the rest of the top ten combined. I do not think of this as a second place finish but rather the 1A acting job relative to Lawrence’s 1.
Why do we love Chastain? After largely coming out of nowhere to act in every fourth film over the past two years, Chastain has finally found the perfect role. In Zero Dark Thirty, she is generally identified as The Girl, although her actual name of Maya is used on occasion. Maya has one task in the world. She will find Osama bin Laden and when she does, she will insure that he is held accountable for the atrocities he inflicted upon innocent people in New York City.
Maya has no social life, no other desires in life. She is laser-focused on the assignment at hand. This personality trait is what distinguishes her from a cadre of government-employed spooks and suits all ostensibly assigned the same task. Chastain sinks into this role as if it is her second skin.
In refusing to overplay the role, she crafts an identity of a headstrong woman who is heard not because she shouts but instead because she is the smartest person in the room. People want to hear her speak. For this reason, they listen intently even as they oftentimes hate what she has to say. In a movie chock-full of hulking men with alpha male tendencies, Maya possesses the most dangerous mind. It is a tour de force acting performance from someone we did not even know two years ago. In any other year, Chastain would have handily won this category. For the current year, she will have to settle for the narrowest possible loss.
Quvenzhané Wallis of Beasts of the Southern Wild finishes far behind Lawrence and Chastain in third place. Only six-years-old when she played the role of Hushpuppy, Wallis delivers a heart-breaking performance as an adolescent unaware of the tragedy surrounding her existence. All she wants to do is see her mommy again. If she has to set a fire or two along the way or maybe punch her father so hard that he has a heart attack, so be it. Hushpuppy is a singularly determined young woman. Our staff realizes that rewarding a six-year-old for her performance is largely giving credit to the production team for placing her in the best position to succeed. So, when we say we love the work of Wallis as Hushpuppy, what we really mean is that Beasts of the Southern Wild is a hallmark achievement in filmmaking.
Rounding out our top five are Aubrey Plaza for Safety Not Guaranteed and Naomi Watts for The Impossible. Plaza’s untraditional look and abrasive sense of humor have prevented her from being cast as a romantic lead. With Safety Not Guaranteed, she found the perfect story to demonstrate her breathtaking talent. If Hollywood casting agents would look beyond the American Apparel Ad mentality, they would notice that the pretty people are a dime a dozen in Los Angeles. Plaza is singularly unique.
Watts’ role is a lot more strenuous; it is also a lot showier. She portrays a vacationing mother whose life is uprooted during the 2004 Indian Ocean typhoon that killed almost a quarter million people. Watts’ character, Maria, suffers a savage leg injury during the attack. She is also separated from most of her family, save for one son. Selflessly ignoring her own safety, Maria saves a child who has been swept away from his parents. The three of them fight their way to a hospital, and they attempt to survive their surroundings long enough to find their loved ones. Watts is a previous winner in this category for her performance in The Ring, but she shows more emotional depth and raw emotion in The Impossible than she ever has before. The Impossible is the saddest movie of 2012. She delivers magnificent dignity to the story.
Our sixth and seventh place selections are Noomi Rapace and Michelle Williams. This echoes our 2011 category results wherein Rapace finished in eighth place while Williams finished fourth. At the time, Rapace introduced herself to the world with her take on Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, while Williams was celebrated for her work in Blue Valentine.
In 2013, Rapace was the face of Prometheus. Starring as the archaeologist who discovers a star map that may lead humanity to our creators, Rapace strikes the perfect notes of dedicated and focused. She is the classic Ridley Scott heroine, much stronger than the men around her because she possesses what they lack: force of will. Rapace is particularly brilliant during a self-surgery scene we chose as one of the best of the year.
Williams is lauded for her work in Take This Waltz. She plays Margot, a mostly happily married woman who encounters a strange but kind and handsome man named Daniel on her flight. As they journey homeward, the two people discover that they live right across the street from one another. Unable to dismiss her attraction Margot keeps finding excuses to hang out with Daniel. And we all know what happens when a married person starts hanging out with a captivating person who is not their spouse. Williams is brilliant as she displays shy, awkward attraction to the forbidden fruit across the street. A less skilled actress would seem like a shrill opportunist in this role whereas Williams is so great that she somehow makes her infidelity seem like the natural choice.
The rest of our top ten is comprised of the under 30 crowd, all of whom are romantic leads in their lauded roles. Kara Hayward of Moonrise Kingdom will not be old enough to drink for another seven years, but she still steals the show as an emotionally damaged girl who finds some happiness through romance. Emily Blunt, who becomes a part of the over 30 crowd in 48 hours, is charming in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. She portrays a project planner tasked with an impossible goal: helping salmon survive in Yemen. Along the way, she falls in love (arguably twice) and somehow rises above the ordinary clichés of the romantic comedy genre. The same is true of Keira Knightley, a woman who has the misfortune of being stuck in a bad relationship just as the world is coming to an end. Seeking a Friend for the End of the World is a small scale triumph of storytelling, and Knightley’s performance is the key to its success.
Narrowly missing nomination are Jennifer Lawrence again for her performance as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, Anna Kendrick as the lead in Pitch Perfect, Academy Awards nominee Emmanuelle Riva in Amour, Gina Carano in Haywire, Helen Mirren in Hitchcock, Helen Hunt in The Sessions, Leslie Mann in This Is 40, Ann Dowd in Compliance and Rosemarie De Witt in Your Sister’s Sister.
View other awards
Calvins Intro
Best Actor
Best Actress
Best Album
Best Cast
Best Character
Best Director
Best Overlooked Film
Best Picture
Best Scene
Best Screenplay
Best Supporting Actor
Best Supporting Actress
Best TV Show
Best Use of Music
Best Videogame
Breakthrough Performance
Worst Performance
Worst Picture