Film Feature: The Best Lead Performances of 2012

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The Best Actresses of 2012

Five Runner-ups (in alphabetical order): Emayatzy Corinealdi (“Middle of Nowhere”), Marion Cotillard (“Rust and Bone”), Ann Dowd (“Compliance”), Quvenzhane Wallis (“Beasts of the Southern Wild”), and Michelle Williams (“Take This Waltz”).

Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook
Photo credit: The Weinstein Company

How quickly must actors and actresses jump when their agents call with a David O. Russell screenplay? The writer/director won two Oscars for stars of his last film — Christian Bale and Melissa Leo — and he could do the same again this year for Robert De Niro and the wonderful Jennifer Lawrence, an actress who has quickly risen to that “she makes everything better” status of stars. Even in junk like “House at the End of the Street,” Lawrence brings something special and, when she gets as meaty a part as Tiffany in “Silver Linings Playbook,” she destroys it. To say she holds her own with more veteran actors like De Niro and Bradley Cooper would be an understatement. She steals nearly every scene she’s in, perfectly capturing a unique balance between confrontation and vulnerability. Tiffany is the kind of girl who will tell you to f**k off and then hug you to say she’s sorry. It’s a tough balance that few actresses could have pulled off with this degree of accomplishment.

Emmanuelle Riva in Amour
Photo credit: Sony Pictures Classics

There are scenes in Michael Haneke’s emotionally devastating “Amour” that feel like moments we shouldn’t be watching. There’s so much truth and pain on display in the story of the last days of an elderly couple’s existence that it’s like we’re invading someone’s privacy. Achieving that complete lack of artifice is much more difficult than it looks. Taking a film production and making it feel like we’re not watching characters but rather just witnessing reality, especially when it’s a reality that is this heartbreaking, isn’t as easy as it sounds. Riva portrays the diminishing mental and physical capabilities of a once-strong woman in ways that serve as a realistic reminder to us all — this could easily be you or your loved one someday. It’s the truth that makes the reminder so emotionally resonant.

Naomi Watts in The Impossible
Photo credit: Summit

Speaking of truth, as an actress, Naomi Watts is incapable of being false and so, when she’s wandering square miles of debris with her son after a devastating tsunami, you feel actual concern for her well-being. She’s one of those actresses who makes it easy to forget that there are air-conditioned trailers and catering tables on the other side of the camera because she’s always so completely in the moment, even when the moment is as physically and emotionally demanding as it is in “The Impossible.”

Rachel Weisz in The Deep Blue Sea
Photo credit: Music Box Films

Was there a more perfect portrayal of depression in 2012 that Rachel Weisz’s embodiment of doomed love in Terence Davies’ “The Deep Blue Sea”? Hester Collyer is a woman trapped between two impossible relationships and Weisz brings a fatalism to the character that’s incredibly complex. Hester knows her love affair will end badly, but she can’t stop herself. She can’t NOT be in love. Many actors and actresses have tried to capture this inevitability that happens in real life, but it typically comes off as forced melodrama. Not with Rachel Weisz, an actress who really makes us believe that some people dive into the wrong water even when they know they’ll drown.

Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty
Photo credit: Sony

Like so many great performances, Jessica Chastain’s work in “Zero Dark Thirty” is just as remarkable for what it’s not as for what it is. One can easily picture a few dozen actresses in this role who could have taken it in one of two directions — the tough-as-nails agent who gets her way no matter what or the rising star who learns the ropes from her fellow agents but “never forgets she’s a woman.” Chastain and Kathryn Bigelow make no easy decisions with Maya, fully developing a woman with both tough and vulnerable sides. Maya has doubts but she also has conviction. Maya learns over the arc of “ZDT”, but Chastain never over-plays her development, making it genuine instead of melodramatic. And the final shot is such a defining one for this performance in the way it captures what we’re looking for in every great movie — the emotional truth a character tries to hide.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com