Every Oscar season, viewers can count on a few constants: questionable snubs, heated discourse about the morality of the Best Picture slate, and the Best Actress race being an absolute mess. The actresses themselves are unfailingly professional, but Film Twitter is taken over by legions of stans, frothing at the mouth and waging indiscriminate war against each other. This year was worse than ever: from Kristen Stewart to Nicole Kidman, every nominated actress this year, and a few who were snubbed, has a parasocial cult to their name. (Advice for careful readers: if a K-pop star gets nominated for Best Actress, stock up on essentials and invest in a bunker.)But social media drama shouldn’t overshadow great performances, and this category has plenty; now that more quality roles are being written for women, Best Actress might be stronger than ever. Over the past decade, there were years when all five actresses could have easily won in a less competitive environment; alas, some will have to wait, but it’s an encouraging sign of things to come. Here are the past 10 Best Actress winners, ranked by the perfromance that won them their statue.

10. Meryl Streep - The Iron Lady (2011)

Meryl Streep - The Iron Lady (2011)

What’s galling about Meryl Streep’s win for the Margaret Thatcher biopic The Iron Lady isn’t just that she won over a performance like Viola Davis’ in The Help. It’s not even that The Iron Lady itself is a glossy piece of hagiography for a person who left scars on British society that may never heal. No, what’s galling is that, despite the gushing best-of-her-career praise Streep received, it’s not even in her top 10 best performances. When Streep’s storied career comes to a close, how many social media tribute clips will be from The Iron Lady? Never mind Kramer vs. Kramer or Sophie’s Choice: what about Postcards from the Edge? The Devil Wears Prada? Even Death Becomes Her! Yes, Streep nails Thatcher’s voice and mannerisms, and she plays her with intelligence and surprising humanity. But no performance exists in a vacuum, and in The Iron Lady, she can do nothing but maintain some vague sense of importance.

9. Jennifer Lawrence - Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

Jennifer Lawrence - Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

Two years before Jennifer Lawrence won Best Actress, she was nominated in the same category for her role as a determined young woman in the Ozark noir Winter’s Bone. That year, she was the indie underdog; in 2012, it was her coronation. Unfortunately, she deserved the Oscar for Winter’s Bone — heck, even Hunger Games - more than for Silver Linings Playbook. As Tiffany Maxwell, a young widow who forms an unlikely relationship with the bipolar Pat (Bradley Cooper), Lawrence is affecting and often funny, and she has good chemistry with her co-star. But although she would go on to collaborate with David O. Russell twice more, he seems almost willfully committed to miscasting her. Tiffany is supposed to be a wild, untamed woman, the kind who smashes dishes during fights and sleeps with every single person in her office. But Lawrence’s strength has always been her poise and resolve, which makes all the talk of how sloppy and wild Tiffany is ring false. She’s a professional, and she can play neurotic reasonably well, but not well enough for an Oscar.

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8. Emma Stone - La La Land (2016)

Emma Stone - La La Land (2016)

Just as La La Land is an open-hearted love letter to old Hollywood musicals, Emma Stone’s performance is the kind that would have cemented her as a legend of the studio era. She plays Mia Dolan, an aspiring young actress who crosses paths with a charming jazz pianist played by Ryan Gosling. Mia is, of course, an archetype: the Tinseltown dreamer, the plucky young woman who never gives up. But just like the rest of the movie, Stone transcends clichés by leaning into them, reminding the audience why they work in the first place. She’s enormously likable, and her emotions are no less real for being in Technicolor: simply put, the audience wants to see her succeed. That said, 2016 was such a competitive year for Best Actress that Stone ultimately gave the third or fourth-best performance of the category: next to the near-perfection of Natalie Portman in Jackie or Isabelle Huppert in Elle, there were stronger choices that could have been made.

7. Brie Larson - Room (2015)

Brie Larson - Room (2015)

Like Jennifer Lawrence before her, Brie Larson went from indie acclaim to Oscar-winning stardom within a couple of years. Unlike Lawrence, however, she didn’t have a Hunger Games-level success that made her a household name. Instead, she had Room, a movie where she played a kidnaped woman living with her child inside a shack in her captor’s backyard. The role of Joy Newsome is an incredibly difficult one, for many reasons. Not only is it emotionally taxing to play someone in such a traumatic situation, Larson had to capture every side of this three-dimensional character: her anger, her grief, her guilt, her love, and even her joy. Larson conveys tender, motherly sweetness in terrible circumstances, yet never loses sight of the pain Joy is in, whether she’s in that shack or coming to terms with the outside world again. Anyone who had seen Short Term 13 would know that Larson is a special talent, but Room serves as an eternal rebuttal against bitter Marvel fans who claim she can’t act.

6. Julianne Moore - Still Alice (2014)

Julianne Moore - Still Alice (2014)

The phrase “career achievement award,” when applied to the acting races, has a negative connotation; still, these are still actors at the very top of their field, so these make-up prizes are still usually worth watching. So while Julianne Moore shouldn’t have won over Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl (arguably one of the defining performances of the decade), she’s as brilliant as ever in Still Alice. She plays Alice Howland, a professor who succumbs to early-onset Alzheimer’s, and she’s careful to play the person and not the disease. From the start of the movie, Moore embodies the kind of bright, lively middle-aged woman audiences might have had as their own favorite college professor. She’s passionate about her field; she has a loving relationship with her husband (Alec Baldwin); she jogs. Little by little, like an eclipse, Alice’s illness obscures her personality, shrinking her vocabulary and her capabilities until there’s almost nothing left. But at no point does Moore ever lose sight of the person that once was, and, despite everything still is.

5. Frances McDormand - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

Frances McDormand - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Frances McDormand is no bullshit,” John Mulaney enthused in the opening monologue of the 2018 Independent Spirit Awards. “I bet a fun way to commit suicide would be to cut in front of her in line and then go ‘hey lady, relax!’” The film McDormand was nominated for that day, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, features her playing a role in line with her headstrong, unsentimental persona. But in Mildred Hayes’ case, that rugged determination ends up turning her into the titular town’s pariah. McDormand understands that the crusading mother of a murdered daughter is an inherently sympathetic figure, and adds depth by pulling hard in the opposite direction. Mildred is abrasive, stubborn, and frequently ruthless, and McDormand makes every venomous line reading sting. What’s more, she doesn’t play the unpleasant bits as outbursts from a grieving mother; her taut body language and baleful glare suggests that Mildred has been like this for a long time. That’s how McDormand makes Mildred human: no flinching, no excuses, and — indeed — no bullshit.

4. Renée Zellweger - Judy (2019)

Renée Zellweger - Judy

As Rami Malek, Marion Cotillard, and Jamie Foxx can attest, playing a musical icon is a great way to win Oscar gold. However, the actual singing is often a heavy ask: an actress can learn enough ballet or figure skating to be passable with the help of doubles, but no amount of training can give someone a different set of pipes. Renée Zellweger proved she could sing in Chicago, but when she was reported as starring in a Judy Garland biopic, no one would have blamed her for lip-syncing. But Zellweger doesn’t just do her own singing in Judy — she nails it, with an uncanny nuance that goes far beyond a boozy cabaret imitation. That alone deserves hearty praise, and while Zellweger isn’t given as much to do acting-wise in a dour, formulaic biopic, she makes the most of the standard decline-and-fall beats, wringing pathos out of Garland’s attempts to maintain her dignity as her life falls apart around her.

3. Frances McDormand - Nomadland (2020)Nomadland IMDb

Only three years after her Three Billboards win, Frances McDormand won her third Oscar for Nomadland, matching luminaries like Meryl Streep and Ingrid Bergman. Nomadland dominated the awards season, becoming the eventual winner for Best Picture, but it was seen as more of a directorial achievement than an actor’s showcase. Still, McDormand deserves every last plaudit as Fern, a newly-jobless widow who starts to live as a nomad in her van. The phrase “lack of vanity” gets thrown around a lot when it comes to acting, but it truly applies to McDormand. She doesn’t condescend to her character by playing her as a rural grotesque, or a glossy portrait of dignity. Fern isn’t a symbol: she’s a person, a weary, lonely woman trying to find fulfillment as best she can. Maybe the highest compliment is that, when she interacts with real-life nomads, only context keeps her from blending right in.

2. Olivia Colman - The Favourite (2018)

the-favourite-olivia-colman
Image via Fox Searchlight

The Academy has a way of surprising people. Right when it seemed like Glenn Close was about to win her elusive Oscar for The Wife, along came a British sitcom star to take the gold by playing Queen Anne as a gout-ridden, cake-munching lesbian. As disappointed as movie fans were for Close, they were absolutely delighted to see Olivia Colman win for The Favourite — and not just for her giddy, awestruck acceptance speech. In Yorgos Lanthimos’ off-kilter black comedy, Queen Anne is an eccentric woman who would rather play with her rabbits than rule a country, and so her “favourite” (lady-in-waiting/lover) is the true power behind the throne. With her daffy line readings and scatterbrained, capricious demeanor, Colman provides some of the movie’s biggest laughs (like when she’s cheerfully unaware that her country is at war). But The Favourite is a brilliant display of Colman’s dramatic talents, as well: ridden with trauma and possessing immense power, Anne teeters on the brink of madness, and Colman flashes both authority and lunacy whenever the audience (or a certain ambitious interloper) gets too comfortable.

1. Cate Blanchett - Blue Jasmine (2013)

Cate Blanchett as Jasmine in 'Blue Jasmine'
Image via Sony Picture Classics

There are many things about Cate Blanchett’s all-timer of a performance in Blue Jasmine that inspire awe. There’s the way she flips Jasmine Francis’ flighty, gabbling demeanor from comic to tragic, then back again, within seconds. There’s her voice, mannered and mellifluous with an ever-present hint of mania. There’s the way she uses her hands when she speaks, as though if she doesn’t keep them moving she might try to claw her eyes out. There’s the bone-deep empathy she has for a character who could have been played as a shrill, hysterical flake. There’s the entirety of the Erica Bishop monologue. And there’s that final scene muttering to herself on a bench, wearing an expression that, if it were a Renaissance painting, would have whole books written about it.