Best Actress: The launch

In March 2017 we launched A Night at the Oscars, both a hobby and a research project into the highs, lows and trends of the Best Picture Academy Awards winners. Three years and 92 movies later, we’ve reached the end, which of course led to many people asking “What the hell are you going to do with your lives now?!”

Well, here’s the answer. Today we launch our next project, in which we go back to the beginning of the Academy Awards’ long, long, LONG history and watch all the Best Actress winners instead. “Why?’, we hear you ask, “do you have nothing better to do with your time?” To answer this - we simply say ‘who asked you? Do you get off on judging people? Go back to your crocheting, Karen.’

As to WHY we are continuing in this way, let us show you some statistics.

Throughout the 92 annual Academy Awards ceremonies that have been held, there is a noticeable connection between certain awards, and not others. The Best Picture winner has also featured the Best Actor winner a total of 27 times- roughly 30% of the ceremonies. Meanwhile, the Best Picture winner has featured the Best Actress winner much less, a total of 11 times- about 12%. 

Not a massive difference, true. But here’s another statistic. About 36% of the Best Actress winners starred in movies that weren’t even nominated for Best Picture, while less, 21%, of the Best Actor winners were in non-nominated movies. Add to this the fact that the Best Director award and the Best Picture award have coincides a whopping 71% of the time- and only one of those Best Director winners is a woman, with only five of all Best Director nominees in 92 years being female. 

These are only a few numbers, but what they show us is that there is a marked correlation between the Best Picture, Best Actor and, especially the Best Director awards, suggesting that the films that win big tend to be those created and represented by a team of men. Meanwhile, the Best Actress winners are for stand-alone performances, in more movies that may not be complete packages but still feature one outstanding woman at the centre. 

As such, we believe that watching the Best Actress winners will introduce us to a wider range of popular films (and revisit a few previously-reviewed ones); films that will show us the changing trends in ideals surrounding femininity, beauty, female strength, and female acting styles; films that may well have been unjustly overlooked due to patriarchal dominance in Hollywood that is still rife; films that may have provided inspiration and courage to women at times when they needed it; and even some films that may just be a bit shite. 

We’ll see actresses who everyone knows; actresses whose names have faded away with time; actresses who had one big hit; and actresses who had double and, in one case, quadruple wins. 

So, without further ado, we return to the late-1920s to begin at the beginning…again.