My Favorite Performances of the Decade (Actresses)

It's time for Round 2. Having already revealed my choices for my 30 Favorite Male Performances of the Decade in a photo tribute, the actresses are up next. As unpopular a stance as this is, I think it was a far better decade for acting than actual films. And that's never been clearer than with the selections below, as many of these performances are actually far superior to the movies containing them. I found myself able to rattle off at least over 50 female performances deserving of the highest praise quickly enough that those claiming there are "no good roles for actresses anymore" may want to seriously reconsider that position. Narrowing it down to 30 was a challenge, as was limiting myself to one performance per actress.

The choices were so strong that even performers I'm normally not a fan (in some films I'm not even a fan of) still managed to strike gold once and show up on here. In fact, as a whole, you could argue this crushes the actor list by a considerable margin. What's so funny about it is that with the exception of a few choices this is exactly the kind of list I'd probably be mocking as "elitist" and "snobby" if someone else posted it. But let's be honest---all these performances are often mentioned as the best simply because it's true. And here they are:


Naomi Watts (Mulholland Drive)




Reese Witherspoon (Walk The Line)




Kate Winslet (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)




Charlize Theron (Monster)




Kate Hudson (Almost Famous)




Ellen Burstyn (Requiem for a Dream)




Jennifer Connelly (House of Sand and Fog)




Nicole Kidman (Dogville)




Michelle Williams (Wendy and Lucy)




Scarlett Johansson (Match Point)





Ellen Page (Hard Candy)




Kirsten Dunst (Marie Antoinette)




Q'Orianka Kilcher (The New World)




Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton)




Uma Thurman (Kill Bill Vol. 1/Vol. 2)




Evan Rachel Wood (The Life Before Her Eyes)

Melanie Laurent (Inglourious Basterds)




Kim Basinger (The Door in the Floor)




AnnaSophia Robb (Bridge to Terebithia)




Cameron Diaz (Vanilla Sky)




Maggie Gyllenhaal (Secretary)




Natalie Portman (Closer)




Sarah Michelle Gellar (Southland Tales)




Zooey Deschanel (All the Real Girls)




Katie Holmes (Pieces of April)




Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married)




Diane Lane (Unfaithful)




Frances O' Connor (A.I.)




Gwyneth Paltrow (The Royal Tenenbaums)




Shannyn Sossamon (The Rules of Attraction)

My Favorite Performances of the Decade (Actors)

I'm definitely not above taking great ideas just so long as the the proper credit is given. This past week I discovered THIS LIST over at Jeremy Richey's Moon in the Gutter blog and was inspired to compile my own photo tribute of my favorite acting performances over the past ten years (and help kill time while I continue to work on my best films of the decade list). I agreed with a lot of his picks, added some, and you'll find a few big surprises (though not as many as you'll see on the upcoming actress list) While naming thirty may seem excessive, it really isn't when you consider all the fine acting work done over the past decade. Whittling it down was tough and inevitably some of my favorites had to be cut.

I wasn't brave enough to even attempt ranking these in order of preference since my respect for all of these would just make that impossible. My only rule was to not include an actor twice. So if they gave more than one performance I felt was worthy, I picked the overlooked one to draw needed attention to it. But that's not to say some of these have already been showered with massive accolades and praise for good reason. Going in I told myself I wouldn't include anything from 2009 so, go figure, I put one on anyway and it's a real testament to his work that I didn't hesitate breaking my own rules to single him out. It'll be interesting to see whether I cave in again and deem '09 eligible when compiling the best films of the decade. You wouldn't be wrong to assume some clues to the contents of that could be found here. I'm sure this won't be the last mention of at least a few of these.

George Clooney (Michael Clayton)




Brad Pitt (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)




Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)




Jeff Daniels (The Squid & the Whale)




Jeff Bridges (The Door in the Floor)




Michael Douglas (Wonder Boys)




Ben Foster (Alpha Dog)




Daniel Day Lewis (There Will Be Blood)




Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight)




Emile Hirsch (Into The Wild)




Ed Norton (25th Hour)




Haley Joel Osment (A.I.)




Tobin Bell (Saw II)




Nicolas Cage (Adaptation)




Noah Emmerich (Little Children)




Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men)




Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Brick)




Adam Sandler (Punch Drunk Love)




Gene Hackman (The Royal Tenenbaums)




Sean Penn (The Assassination of Richard Nixon)




Bill Murray (Lost in Translation)




Patrick Wilson (Hard Candy)




Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men)




Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)




Steve Carell (The 40-Year-Old Virgin)




Luke Wilson (The Royal Tenenbaums)




Ryan Gosling (Lars and the Real Girl)




Paul Giamatti (Sideways)




Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino)




Colin Farrell (In Bruges)