Best actor/actress (lead or support) Oscar winning portrayals of real life characters

[Alixana]

Wow. Just wait until Hayden Panettiere wins for "The Cate Blanchett Story".

Never!

[Wyliefan]

How about Lindsay Lohan playing Liz Taylor? Man, that was a hoot and a half.

[my little pony]

How about Lindsay Lohan playing Liz Taylor? Man, that was a hoot and a half.

i got the best drinking game from gofugyourself, but i had to abandon it before it was over, my liver was ossifying so fast it was almost audible

[Rob]

i taped Liz and Dick. Can't wait till I have time to watch.

[Seerek]

7 of the past 10 Best Actresses were real life people

2011 Meryl Streep The Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher
2009 Sandra Bullock The Blind Side Leigh Anne Tuohy
2007 Marion Cotillard La Vie en Rose Édith Piaf
2006 Helen Mirren The Queen Queen Elizabeth II
2005 Reese Witherspoon Walk the Line June Carter
2003 Charlize Theron Monster Aileen Wuornos
2002 Nicole Kidman The Hours Virginia Woolf

[my little pony]

i taped Liz and Dick. Can't wait till I have time to watch.

it's awful in a hysterically wonderful way, watch it with someone to make fun of it. if you dont have a drinking game in place, just drink each time you see a different bar cart or turban.

[duane]

Don't know if this counts, but Jodie Foster's Oscar-winning role in The Accused was based on a true character.

[essence_of_soy]

What do they do in the case of a tie? Do they give the award to the actor with the higher technical score?

I thought Babs would win by a nose, but there you go.

[rjblue]

One of my favourite performances- Susan Sarandon won the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Sister Helen Prejean, in Dead Man Walking.

Sean Penn was also nominated for his character, but his was an amalgamation of two people.

[duane]

Oh, and how can we forget the great 1993 Oscar nominated performances of Angela Bassett and Lawrence Fishburne as Ike and Tina Turner in What's Love Got To Do With It.

[Simone411]

How about Lindsay Lohan playing Liz Taylor? Man, that was a hoot and a half.

They talked about this on The View this morning and showed screenclips. They mentioned it was more like a comedy than anything else.

[screech]

Jennifer Connelly won for A Beautiful Mind in 2002.
Ingrid Bergman as Anastasia (1956)

[Artemis@BC]

7 of the past 10 Best Actresses were real life people

2011 Meryl Streep The Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher
2009 Sandra Bullock The Blind Side Leigh Anne Tuohy
2007 Marion Cotillard La Vie en Rose Édith Piaf
2006 Helen Mirren The Queen Queen Elizabeth II
2005 Reese Witherspoon Walk the Line June Carter
2003 Charlize Theron Monster Aileen Wuornos
2002 Nicole Kidman The Hours Virginia Woolf

Again, I see those as 2 separate categories. Leigh Anne Tuohy and Aileen Wuornos (and Sister Helen Prejean) were real people, but not in any way famous. Few people outside their own circle knew who they were or what they did. So there's far less pressure for the actor to play the character in a way that's recognizable and expected.

To me the really impressive task is when the actor goes beyond mimickry. Take away the wow-she/he-really-looks/sounds-like-the-real-person aspect, and ask yourself if the acting performance stands on its own. Sadly, IMO a lot of best acting winners won only because they were playing a famous person. Marion Cotillard is a case in point: the mimickry of Piaf was superb ... but beyond that the performance was only pretty good. Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, and Helen Mirren, oth, gave performances that transcended their famous characters.

And of course Meryl Streep had the added challenge of working with a medocre-at-best script ... but that's a whole other thread. "Actors who've won best actor awards in bad movies." (Pretty short list mind you.)

[screech]

Another winner is Dame Judi Dench for QEI in Shakespeare in Love. IIRC her win made news because she had such a small amount of screen time and so few lines. But she's just awesome.

[Artemis@BC]

Another winner is Dame Judi Dench for QEI in Shakespeare in Love. IIRC her win made news because she had such a small amount of screen time and so few lines. But she's just awesome.

She was indeed awesome in that role (when is she not?). But folks also saw it as somewhat of a consolation prize, as she should have won best actress the previous year for her role as Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown.

[my little pony]

They talked about this on The View this morning and showed screenclips. They mentioned it was more like a comedy than anything else.

it looked like an SNL skit. everyone aged decades and talked about how they were getting fat but they did not use aging makeup or padding so they looked exactly the same. at one pt they did put some grey in the wigs.

[duane]

Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, and Helen Mirren, oth, gave performances that transcended their famous characters.

Who would have ever imagined that Caesonia, the "most promiscuous woman in Rome" who became Caesar's wife in 1979's controversial Caligula, would have such a successful and an honored career. The movie reportedly destroyed many careers (tho I must admit it's one of my guilty pleasures, and I love Mirren's performance!).

[falling_dance]

Joseph Schildkraut as Capt. Alfred Dreyfus in The Life of Emile Zola
Mary Steenburgen as Lynda Dummar in Melvin and Howard

[Vash01]

She was indeed awesome in that role (when is she not?). But folks also saw it as somewhat of a consolation prize, as she should have won best actress the previous year for her role as QEII in Mrs. Brown.

I too think she should have won for Mrs. Brown, but I think she played QE I (not QE II).

[falling_dance]

Dench portrayed Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown.