walter is so great as evelyn i should have her on my lead actress list. she is the film!

this is a tough call because the women is an ensemble piece. but rosalind russell deserves mad props for making sylvia funny and sympathetic. her work is right in there with jessica walter's libby from 'the group'.

cate blanchett wasn't the first to play hepburn. tovah feldshuh played her in a movie about howard hughes. and kate mulgrew did a one-woman show about hepburn. but blanchett was all over her moments in this film. the golf scene still kills me because it's so funny and yet, she looks like hepburn stalking right off the screen and into my heart!

kathleen byron is marvelous as sister ruth. it's one of those intense, no holds barred performances that haunt you way after the film is over.

1998 was a year that the film community claimed had no work by black actors that deserved oscar recognition. well, here's one! queen latifah's sexy, swinging lounge singer is a poised elegant perfomance in a unique film.

get past oprah winfrey's stiff sethe and you get 3 for 3, beah richards, thandie newton and kimberly elise as, respectively, baby suggs, beloved and denver?

vivica a fox walked off with this film in her gutsy, humorous take on frankie lymon's second and most complex wife, elizabeth. and that's seven in a year that critics claimed there were none. shame on you people. they should take your payola back.

in a year when people went nuts for kim basinger's wax museum-like walk through 'la confidential', they were missing debbi morgan's mazelle in this lyrical film. morgan created a character so real that you could smell her.

agnes moorhead should have gotten ten years for stealing this film from the others. but she is magnificent! i love her as fanny.

shelley winters rocks the house with her tragicomic, classic turn as charlotte haze in a most black dramedy of lust!

while ball was working it as goldigging tiger lily, co-star field gave a sustained performance of beauty as kitty, a ballet dancer turned streetwalker in waterloo bridge.

i really love halle berry's work in the dorothy dandridge film. and i didn't mind 'monster's ball' as much as i thought i would. but this is some of her best neglected work--along with 'losing isiah'.

part of the reason why this piece is so stunning is because of the cast; but the shining light is alfre woodard. it is just as easy to laud her work as the one-trick ponies of the moment. and more enduring.

after viewing this film many times, and after loving winona ryder's fresh new take on jo and the contemporary feel given to the screenplay, the one performance that sticks is claire danes as beth.