2022 Nominees for Best Actress

by Elysian Magazine

The Nominees:

Jessica Chastain – The Eyes of Tammy Faye
Olivia Colman – The Lost Daughter
Penelope Cruz – Parallel Mothers
Nicole Kidman – Being the Ricardos
Kristen Stewart – Spencer


Jessica Chastain – The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Acclaimed as the Meryl Streep of her generation, Jessica has starred in more than 40 major motion pictures in addition to made-for-television movies, such as Murder on the Orient Express (2010), in which she played English governess Mary Debenham opposite the greatest Poirot of all time, David Suchet. No stranger to awards ceremonies, she has been nominated for two other Academy Awards thus far—for Best Actress for Zero Dark Thirty and Best Supporting Actress for The Help. She is a chameleon, This is the best part I’ve ever had in terms of the challenge. I just had to let her completely into my life and really go into the world of Tammy Faye.” American evangelist, singer, author, talk show host and television personality Tammy Faye Bakker, co-founded the PTL Club with her husband, Jim Bakker, in 1974. She fought cancer for 11 years before succumbing to the disease in 2007 at the age of 65.


Olivia Colman – The Lost Daughter

American actress Maggie Gyllenhaal’s debut as a writer and director, The Lost Daughter is the unsettling story of a middle-aged woman who encounters a young mother staying at a nearby villa while she is having a quiet seaside vacation and unexpectedly awakens memories from her past. Based on the book by Elena Ferrante, starring one of the most diverse actors, the 48-year-old English actress Olivia Colman, is equally known for her comedic performances as her dramatic, on both the small screen and the silver screen. Many will recall her as Queen Elizabeth in season four of The Crown.


Penelope Cruz – Parallel Mothers

Penélope plays a professional photographer in her 40s who shares a room in a maternity hospital with a teenage mother-to-be as they await the birth of their respective babies on the same day. Both single mothers, through the pain of delivery, they forge a kinship that changes their lives in decisive ways. She has made seven films together with director/writer Pedro Almodovar, universally considered one of the best and most respected filmmakers working in the industry today. She won the best supporting Oscar for her performance in the 2008 film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona.


Nicole Kidman – Being the Ricardos

American/Australian actress Nicole Kidman took on the role of one of Hollywoods greatest stars and most successful businesswomen, Lucille Ball in the black biopic. Nicole is no stranger to the Academy Awards—she has been nominated four times for Best Actress, winning once for her performance in the 2003 film, The Hours, and nominated in 2017 for best supporting actress in Lion. In Being the Ricardos she plays opposite Spanish actor, Javier Bardem, the real-life husband of Penelope Cruz, who became the first Spanish actor to win an Oscar, in 2008, for his performance as Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. For those who indeed “loved Lucy,” Nicole’s performance is admirable but this reviewer, at least, finds fault with the dark side the film attempts to reveal—almost like a determined paparazzi who is bent on uncovering a scandalous photo with the knowledge that it could destroy lives. Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, the interviews portrayed in the film are fabricated, the events portrayed happened years, not days, apart, and the FBI claims Lucy was never officially investigated, let alone convicted, as a member of the Communist party. No matter how good the acting, too many liberties were taken to produce this movie, and as someone who knows someone who was a close, longtime friend of Lucy’s, and played canasta with her the day before she died, Nicole’s performance simply does not add up.


Kristen Stewart – Spencer

Kristen Stewart, 32, is the youngest actress up for a Best Actress Oscar this year. Watching her performance in Spencer as Princess Diana reminded this reviewer of Dorothy Parker’s observation of Katharine Hepburn’s lackluster performance in the 1933 Broadway play, The Lake, when she wrote, “Miss Hepburn ran the whole gamut of emotions—from A to B. Kristin is annoyingly looks down coyly, bats her eyelashes, sighs, and drowns in self-pity and fails to bring any depth into her performance. The writer overplays “Papa” as Diana forelornely remembers her dead father when ignoring the trauma that surely was caused when Diana’s mother, Frances, Viscountess Althorp, abandoned her five children after her parents’ separation in 1967 during the Christmas holidays—a fact that should have, but failed, to figure at all in this film. Diana, who was seven at the time of her parents’ divorce, referred to that chapter in her life as “very unhappy..very unstable, the whole thing.”

This “autobiographical” film admits, right from the beginning, that it is based on perception and not truth. Director Pablo Larrain is clearly enthralled—as was the world—with Diana and attempts to get under her skin, into her head and heart as he “recounts” the Christmas at Sandringham with the royal family before her divorce from Charles. Described as a “psychological drama of the Princess in an existential crisis,” Spencer is beautifully filmed shows off Diana in some of her gorgeous clothes and is pure bunk. The pivotal shooting scenes are incorrectly staged at Sandringham, the crown’s foremost wingshooting estate. Diana was born at Park House, Sandringham, and grew up there with her siblings, often playing at Sandringham House with the Queen’s sons, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward. The film makes a big deal about Diana being unfamiliar and lost when she returns for Christmas. Balderdash.

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