3. Clementine - Kate Winslet (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)
It might surprise some people to see Kate Winslet on this list instead of Jim Carrey, but Jim Carrey gets enough credit playing against type for this movie, and yet everybody seems to forget that Kate Winslet was playing against type too in her role as Clementine. In fact, it's almost as if Carrey and Winslet got given the wrong parts - it'd have been far more usual for him to have taken the role of the kooky other half. So whereas Winslet doesn't get enough credit for going anti-Winslet for this movie (at the time that
Eternal Sunshine came out she had mostly spent her career in period dramas), this is wholly notable as a successful performance beyond type.