Oscar's Collection: The Youngest Best Actress Nominees

Another Oscar Trivia Explosion. This time it's the Actresses. 

Jennifer Lawrence made quite a film-carrying impression in Winter's Bone this past summer. It was one of the leggiest arthouse hits in some time, playing for months, and wracking up $6+ million without a huge advertising budget or bankable stars and with grim subject matter. Well done. At Christmas Hailee Steinfeld will lead us on a revenge journey in True Grit. While we suspect she's the lead actress as well, people her age are almost always demoted to "Supporting" if they're sharing the screen with a big star as co-lead and she is. Hi, Jeff Bridges! But we're pretending she's an Oscar lead today so as to have double the excuse to make this list. Humour us, won'cha?

 Imaginary Movie: STEINFELD. LAWRENCE.  WINTER'S TRUE BONE.

36 Youngest Best Actress Nominees

And where Jennifer or Hailee would fit in, were they to be nominated. (Winning performances are in red.) Disclaimer/Bragging: You won't find info this extensive elsewhere! The Official Oscar site / Wikipedia only offer top tens. However the following info is approximate. Though the Academy's top ten is down to the day of the actual nominations, they don't provide official nomination dates only ceremony dates. Inside Oscar and Wikipedia also only list the ceremony dates so we're just using February 1st, ∞ as a general calculation date for when nominations happened for given years.

Youngest "Best Actress" Wins: Matlin & Gaynor

1. Keisha Castle Hughes, Whale Rider (2003) was 13.
   Wow, well would you look at this? Either Jennifer Lawrence or Hailee would become #2 if nominated for Best Actress.
2. Isabelle Adjani, The Story of Adele H (1975) was 20. [more]
3. Keira Knightley, Pride & Prejudice (2005) was 20 going on 21. [more]
4. Ellen Page, Juno (2007) was about to turn 21. [more]
5. Marlee Matlin, Children of a Lesser God (1986) was 21
   She's the youngest winner of all time in this category.
6. Elizabeth Hartman, A Patch of Blue  (1965) was 22.
7. Kate Winslet, Titanic (1997) was 22 and 4 months [more]
8. Janet Gaynor, Seventh Heaven/Sunrise/Street Angel (1927/1928) was just a few days older than Winslet.
9. Leslie Caron, Lili (1953) was 22½
10. TIE! Julia Roberts, Pretty Woman (1990) and Winona Ryder, Little Women (1994) [more on Julia, more on Noni]
    They were both 23 years and 108 days old when they were Best Actress nominated. And here's another twin moment: it was the second nomination for both as they'd been previously honored in Best Supporting Actress.
    

    

    What's in the box? Your first BEST ACTRESS nomination!

    As you can already see this list skews quite a bit younger than the parallel "Ten Youngest Best Actor List which ends with a 27 year old.
    
11. Lynn Redgrave, Georgy Girl (1966) was 23. 
12. Liza Minnelli, The Sterile Cuckoo (1969) was 23. [more]
13. Catalina Sandino Moreno, Maria Full of Grace (2004) was 23.
14. Carol Kane, Hester Street (1975) was 23.
15. Natalie Wood, Splendor in the Grass (1961) was also 23. [more]
16. Joan Fontaine, Rebecca (1940) was 23. [more]
17. Laura Dern, Rambling Rose (1991) was 24. [more]
18. Merle Oberon, The Dark Angel (1935) was 24. 
19. Jennifer Jones, The Song of Bernadette (1943) was 24. [more]
20.  Julie Christie, Darling (1965) was 24. [more]
21. Shirley Maclaine, Some Came Running (1958) was 24. [more]
22. Audrey Hepburn, Roman Holiday (1953) was 24. [more]
23.  Jeanne Crain, Pinky (1949) was 24.
24. Carey Mulligan, An Education (2009) was 24. [more]
25. Joan Fontaine, Suspicion (1941) was 24. (becoming the youngest actress to earn Two-Time Best Actress Nominee status.)
26.  Teresa Wright, Pride of the Yankees (1942) was 24. [more]
27. Elizabeth Taylor, Raintree County (1957) was 25. [more]
28. Audrey Hepburn, Sabrina (1954) was 25.
29. Carrol Baker, Baby Doll (1956) was 25.
30. Maggie McNamara, The Moon is Blue (1953) was 25.
31. Natalie Wood, Love with the Proper Stranger (1963) was 25.
32. Hilary Swank, Boys Don't Cry (1999) was 25 [more]
33. Greta Garbo, Anna Christie/Romance (1929/1930) was 25. [more]
34. Carrie Snodgress, Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970) was 25.
35. Gene Tierney, Leave Her To Heaven (1945) was 25. 
36. Grace Kelly, The Country Girl (1954) was 25. [more]

Audrey & Natalie (♥) are the runners up to Joan Fontaine's "youngest 
woman to achieve 'Two-Time Best Actress Nominee' status." They both did it 
by 25. (It was Natalie's 3rd nom, see also supporting, but she never won.)

26 year olds in chronological order are (winners in red): Katharine Hepburn, Morning Glory (1932/1933), Luise Rainer, The Great Ziegfeld (1936), Wendy Hiller, Pygmalian (1938), Vivien Leigh, Gone With the Wind (1939), Joan Fontaine, The Constant Nymph (1943), Jennifer Jones, Love Letters (1945), Elizabeth Taylor, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Shirley Maclaine, The Apartment (1960), Samantha Eggar, The Collector (1965), Faye Dunaway, Bonnie & Clyde (1967), Barbra Streisand, Funny Girl (1968), Liza Minnelli, Cabaret (1972), Jodie Foster, The Accused (1988), Gwyneth Paltrow, Shakespeare in Love (1998), Samantha Morton, In America (2003), Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married (2008) and Gabourey Sidibe, Precious (2009).

Why did I stop there when the male list went to 30? Well, have you ever seen William Wyler's The Collector (1965) with Samantha Eggar and Terence Stamp?

Sexy Stockholm Syndrome: Stamp & Samantha in Sixty-Five

In the movie Terence Stamp plays an unbelievably sexy charismatic creep --perhaps he's just meant to be a creep but it's Stamp so --  who stalks and then kidnaps a beautiful young redhead (Eggar) who he takes to his lair intending to wine and dine her. It's easy to interpret it as a deeply symbolic film about The Academy Awards and their annual mauling/coopting of young actresses into Oscar's circus. "Get in the van missy, you're going to the Kodak!" [Where am I going with this?  Abort. Abort... Note to self: Blog Tourettes Medication. Look into it. Not all trains of thought need airing.] 

Ahem... You'll notice, perhaps sadly if you're a trivia nut like me, that this list does not include everyone up to the age of 30 as the corresponding Best Actor list did. Let me put it to you this way: in the whole history of the Academy Awards the Oscars have only nominated a leading man under thirty 22 times in 80+ years. I had planned to make this list exactly parallel, but I wasn't yet out of the 1930s (the 1930s!) and I was already past a top 25 and there was no way the list would ever be finished given that there were still 70+ years to go! So I decided I'd have to stop at age 26 and even then you can see that the numbers just explode.

In other words... Terence "Oscar" Stamp in The Collector! Here are The Girls from the past decade.

  Youngest Lead Actress Nominees of the Aughts

Do these lists make you feel old? Perhaps you aged just trying to make it through?

Streep and Roberts for "August: Osage County"

The news, which isn't actual news yet so much as 'in talks' talking-points (the bulk of online movie articles), is this: Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts will take the plum Oscar bait roles of the pill-popping abusive matriarch Violet and eldest control-freak daughter Barbara in August: Osage County. The new (to feature directing) John Wells will sit in the director's chair instead of Mike Nichols as previously rumored.  It seems quite risky to give a project this complex and fraught with ways in which it could go wrong to a newbie but maybe his debut film (The Company Men) is unexpectedly rich?

 One of the most popular posts in the history of The Film Experience was our discussion of the casting of this genius actress-heavy play. It's THE stage-to-screen project to watch for any actressexual out there since the cast that matters is all female and the roles, to a one, are juicy with extra pulp. (The supporting female roles could put Oscars on shelves, too.)This news, if it does become actual news, is a weird sort of exciting/disappointing.

As many of you have gleaned I am something of an über Streep fan but I think she's wrong for this part. Streep has a glorious earthy warmth as a performer and Violet needs the opposite. Streep's most successful "cold" performances were in A Cry in the Dark (which came during the amazing chameleon years) and The Devil Wears Prada (see previous post) which came during her comedic ascendance. To do justice to Violet, she'd need to be as good as she was in both pictures... simultaneously. And sometimes when Streep goes cold (Doubt, The Manchurian Candidate) she pushes too much. Violet is more complicated than either the Prada or Cry roles and requires both jagged comic steel and dormant volcanic drama ... and both need to be channelled through a druggy fog for the entire film. In short: it's an A+ dream role, better than many whole Best Actress rosters combined.

I like Julia Roberts.

If Julia works as hard for August as she did for Erin Brockovich or Closer than she might absolutely nail the role of exhausted controlling Barbara. But how often does Julia work as hard as she does in those two movies? When you're a massive star with more innate charisma than most performers can muster over the entirety of a career, coasting is an ever present danger. If she coasts at all, you'll lose the electricity of the play. The play just crackles with the stuff. Any loss of that and you could have a disaster on your hands.

Streep is such a consummate performer that, whether miscast or not, many people will demand she win a third Oscar because she will be so spectacularly watchable in the end. Even if it's not quite what the movie needs. (We'll see. I can't say how badly I hope to be wrong.)

I watched the 3 hour play from the edge of my seat and loved-loved-loved. I will anxiously await the movie. But both casting decisions feel like the kind anyone could and would make without actually knowing anything about the play, the roles, the tone or what kind of movie it would need to be to be a great one. It reeks of corporate laziness. They are rather inarguably the most famous senior citizen actress and the most famous middle age actress; "STREEP | ROBERTS" will look great on a marquee. But it's sad to cast source material this magnificent with no regard for the actual source material, and all eyes towards some imaginary marquee.

Movies should come first, not their ad campaigns.
*

Actors on Actors: "The Susan Hayward of it All"

Actors on Actors looks at screen moments when stars are name-checked... by other stars! It's very meta. Since we're multi-tasking today trying to catch up, it's also a Tuesday Top Ten! In this episode, a scene from My Best Friend's Wedding (1997)

Julia Roberts: I have big plans for dancing. Just give me 30-35 years."
Rupert Everett [the voice on that ginormous cel phone]: The misery. The exquisite tragedy. The Susan Hayward of it all!"

The umimpeachably witty Mr. Everett (aided by that film's wonderful screenplay from Ronald Bass) is, of course, referring to the grand high priestess of exclamatory drama, Miss "I Want to Live!" Herself. It's not just those curtain-chewing performances, the desperate women she played or the trashy films but the gleefully histrionic taglines, too.

For no reason other than that I plan to live my life with exclamation points this week...

10 Best Taglines from Susan Hayward Films

 (We really should do like a Hayward tribute week at some point.)

10 "She made good - with a plunging neckline, and the morale of a tigress"
from I Can Get it For You Wholesale (1951)

09 "LOVE-WRECKED!"
from Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman! (1963)

08"They branded her "Adulteress"!
from The President's Lady (1953)

07 "HARD-MUSCLED! SOFT-HEARTED!"
from The Fighting Seabees (1944)

06 "Do you know what they say about Laura Pember? They say she uses men like pep-up pills!"  from Stolen Hours which is also known as Summer Flight (1963)

05 "Love can make a killer out of a woman... and a fool out of any man!"
from I Thank a Fool (1962)

04 "She fell from fame to shame!" from I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955)

03 "The way SHE loved a Man could lead in only one direction - DOWN!"
from They Won't Believe Me (1947)

02 "A FAST BUCK... A FAST BRONC ... A FAST THRILL"
from The Lusty Men (1952)

01 "This story was filmed on location...  inside a woman's soul!"
also from I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955)
It's not just the greatest tagline from a Susan Hayward picture, it's the greatest movie tagline of the 20th century! And probably the 21st century too!! It deserves so many exclamation points !!!

At the annual convention of TLCOM (Tag Line Copywriters of America) their lifetime achievement prize is called "The Hayward".*

*I made that last part up but it should be the truth.