Elizabeth Olsen follows a long line of battered Best Actress winners.
This weekend sees the release of the highly anticipated thriller (and possible Oscar contender) Martha Marcy May Marlene. Many pundits, including our own Anna, Mike, and myself are predicting that Elizabeth Olsen will be among the nominees for Best Lead Actress. Beyond starring in an acclaimed indie gaining serious publicity momentum, Olsen is also young and pretty, which as we all know the voters love. But is there another element to her performance that would give her an Oscar-baiting advantage? Well, in the film, Olsen plays a young woman plagued by memories of her time spent with an abusive cult in the Catskill Mountains, and there’s her additional advantage. When a large portion of a young woman’s performance is in explicit pain, Oscar usually isn’t far behind.
Looking at the past ten years of Best Actress nominees, over half of them were for characters that go through overt forms of physical and/or mental torment. The last lineup was a very comprehensive example of this. Collectively, you had depression, poverty, physical assault, marital woes and public humiliation spread among the four nominees. The winner, Natalie Portman, spent almost the entirety of Black Swan in perpetual distress from a laundry list of inward and outward ailments including possible incest. Read more on Best Actress: Make Sure They See You Suffer…
Tags: Best Actress, Charlize Theron, Elizabeth Olsen, Halle Berry, Hilary Swank, incredibly unpleasant films, La Vie En Rose, Marion Cotillard, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Million Dollar Baby, Monster's Ball, nicole kidman, Oscar bait, oscar predictions, the hours
