7. Gloria Swanson (Sunset Blvd. 1950)
Norma Desmond famously retorted in Sunset Blvd., I am big. It's the pictures that got small. and indeed roles do not come any bigger than Gloria Swansons comeback performance. It was an utter travesty that Swanson was passed over for her mesmerizing role in Billy Wilders film about a former silent-film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.Gloria Swansons haunting and layered portrayal of Norma Desmond was all the more captivating and believable because it closely resembled Glorias own career. Swansons role was seminal in exposing the vacuous, money making machine that Hollywood had become. Her character, frozen in a narcissistic fantasy of stardom, unable to accept her faltering career, pulled back the curtains for all to see the darker side of Hollywood and attacked it's obsession with youth. It was widely thought that Judy Holliday won the Oscar for her role as ex-showgirl, Billie Dawn, in Born Yesterday mostly because voters were split between Bette Davis in All About Eve and Gloria Swanson. Swanson managed to inject pathos into a role that could have come across as an unsympathetically deranged and creepy Cruella Deville type. The Academy yet again ignore the darker, more challenging role in favour of something more accessible.