Announcing: Rewatching the Best Actresses!

OH, I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS!

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About a decade ago, I got a copy of 501 Must-See Movies for Christmas and stayed up late initialing the pages of the movies I'd already seen and avidly reading the reasons behind why some of the ones I hadn't seen had made the cut. And then that spurred me to watch more movies, and to go onto the internet and look up the 'best movies', which led me to the AFI 100 Year...100 Movies series, and inevitably to the Oscars. 

One of the first categories I completed was the Best Actress Oscar winners. It took several years to watch them all, but I did it. I've also started watching all of the nominees for the major categories, so I see a lot of the newer Best Actress nominees as well (I'm slowly working my way back historically).

BUT it's been a while since I've seen a lot of these movies and I want to see if my tastes have changed. 

And that leads me to my big 2025 project: 

REWATCHING THE BEST ACTRESS WINNERS!

This year I want to (try and) rewatch all of the movies that have won Best Actress. All 97 movies—well, 98 by the end of the year—starting from Janet Gaynor's triple-crown in 1927 through to whoever takes Emma Stone's place as the current Best Actress winner. 

HERE ARE SOME OF THE RULES I'M LAYING OUT: 

1. We're watching these movies chronologically. I can remember how I felt about some of these movies the first time around—and I definitely have a lot of favourite actresses who appear on this list (like Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Ginger Rogers, Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland, and more)—but if I watch these out of order based on vibes, I'll preemptively rank them. Plus, it'll be fun to see how tastes change as we move through time and we can't do that if we watch out of order. 
2. If I don't get all the way to 2024's Best Actress winner, that's okay. I'm not going to try to cram them all in this year, but I would like to be at least 75% done by the end of the year (which Google tells me will be 1999's winner). 
3. Each Best Actress winner will get her own post. To discuss the movie and how I felt about it, and maybe we'll keep a running tally of rankings before a year-end post. 

I think this is going to be fun! I'm looking forward to examining each winner and each movie with a new lens—a decade on, my movie tastes have definitely evolved, and now that I know more about some of these women's lives, it'll be interesting to see if that paints my perception. 

Check back in very soon for our first post about Janet Gaynor's (one and only) triple win for the films of 1927/1928!

HERE'S THE FULL LIST OF BEST ACTRESS WINNERS

1927-1928: Janet Gaynor for Street Angel (1928), Seventh Heaven (1927) and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

1928-1929: Mary Pickford for Coquette (1929)

1929-1930: Norma Shearer for The Divorcee (1930)

1930-1931: Marie Dressler for Min and Bill (1930)

1931-1932: Helen Hayes for The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931)

1932-1933: Katharine Hepburn for Morning Glory (1933)

1934: Claudette Colbert for It Happened One Night (1934)

1935: Bette Davis for Dangerous (1935)

1936: Luise Rainer for The Great Ziegfeld (1936)

1937: Luise Rainer for The Good Earth (1937)

1938: Bette Davis for Jezebel (1938)

1939: Vivien Leigh for Gone with the Wind (1939)

1940: Ginger Rogers for Kitty Foyle (1940)

1941: Joan Fontaine for Suspicion (1941)

1942: Greer Garson for Mrs. Miniver (1942)

1943: Jennifer Jones for The Song of Bernadette (1943)

1944: Ingrid Bergman for Gaslight (1944)

1945: Joan Crawford for Mildred Pierce (1945)

1946: Olivia de Havilland for To Each His Own (1946)

1947: Loretta Young for The Farmer's Daughter (1947)

1948: Jane Wyman for Johnny Belinda (1948)

1949: Olivia de Havilland for The Heiress (1949)

1950: Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday (1950)

1951: Vivien Leigh for A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

1952: Shirley Booth for Come Back, Little Sheba (1952)

1953: Audrey Hepburn for Roman Holiday (1953)

1954: Grace Kelly for The Country Girl (1954)

1955: Anna Magnani for The Rose Tattoo (1955)

1956: Ingrid Bergman for Anastasia (1956)

1957: Joanne Woodward for The Three Faces of Eve (1956)

1958: Susan Hayward for I Want to Live! (1958)

1959: Simone Signoret for Room at the Top (1959)

1960: Elizabeth Taylor for BUtterfield 8 (1960)

1961: Sophia Loren for Two Women (1961)

1962: Anne Bancroft for The Miracle Worker (1962)

1963: Patricia Neal for Hud (1963)

1964: Julie Andrews for Mary Poppins (1964)

1965: Julie Christie for Darling (1965)

1966: Elizabeth Taylor for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

1967: Katharine Hepburn for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? (1967)

1968: Katharine Hepburn for The Lion in Winter (1968)

1968: Barbra Streisand for Funny Girl (1968)

1969: Maggie Smith for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)

1970: Glenda Jackson for Women in Love (1970)

1971: Jane Fonda for Klute (1971)

1972: Liza Minnelli for Cabaret (1972)

1973: Glenda Jackson for A Touch of Class (1973)

1974: Ellen Burstyn for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)

1975: Louise Fletcher for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

1976: Faye Dunaway for Network (1976)

1977: Diane Keaton for Annie Hall (1977)

1978: Jane Fonda for Coming Home (1978)

1979: Sally Field for Norma Rae (1979)

1980: Sissy Spacek for The Coal Miner's Daughter (1980)

1981: Katharine Hepburn for On Golden Pond (1981)

1982: Meryl Streep for Sophie's Choice (1982)

1983: Shirley MacLaine for Terms of Endearment (1983)

1984: Sally Field for Places in the Heart (1984)

1985: Geraldine Page for The Trip to Bountiful (1985)

1986: Marlee Matlin for Children of a Lesser God (1986)

1987: Cher for Moonstruck (1987)

1988: Jodie Foster for The Accused (1988)

1989: Jessica Tandy for Driving Miss Daisy (1989)

1990: Kathy Bates for Misery (1990)

1991: Jodie Foster for The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

1992: Emma Thompson for Howards End (1992)

1993: Holly Hunter for The Piano (1993)

1994: Jessica Lange for Blue Sky (1994)

1995: Susan Sarandon for Dead Man Walking (1995)

1996: Frances McDormand for Fargo (1996)

1997: Helen Hunt for As Good As It Gets (1997)

1998: Gwyneth Paltrow for Shakespeare in Love (1998)

1999: Hilary Swank for Boys Don't Cry (1999)

2000: Julia Roberts for Erin Brockovich (2000)

2001: Halle Berry for Monster's Ball (2001)

2002: Nicole Kidman for The Hours (2002)

2003: Charlize Theron for Monster (2003)

2004: Hilary Swank for Million Dollar Baby (2004)

2005: Reese Witherspoon for Walk the Line (2005)

2006: Helen Mirren for The Queen (2006)

2007: Marion Cotillard for La Vie en Rose (2007)

2008: Kate Winslet for The Reader (2008)

2009: Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side (2009)

2010: Natalie Portman for Black Swan (2010)

2011: Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady (2011)

2012: Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

2013: Cate Blanchett for Blue Jasmine (2013)

2014: Julianne Moore for Still Alice (2014)

2015: Brie Larson for Room (2015)

2016: Emma Stone for La La Land (2016)

2017: Frances McDormand for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

2018: Olivia Colman for The Favourite (2018)

2019: Renee Zellweger for Judy (2019)

2020: Frances McDormand for Nomadland (2020)

2021: Jessica Chastain for The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021)

2022: Michelle Yeoh for Everything, Everywhere All At Once (2022)

2023: Emma Stone for Poor Things (2023)