5. Laura Linney
Why She's Awesome... Laura Linney has always been able to keep up with the men in her movies. She plays commanding women, women so independent they can sometimes come off as cold and detached. She's given Richard Gere, the onscreen lawyer of all onscreen lawyers, a run for his money, she's played an overprotective mother of Rupert Grint, an overbearing mother in
The Nanny Diaries, and an FBI agent, to name just a few. She represents poise and control, and her characters usually aren't afraid to use their feminine wiles to get their way. Although not entirely likable in many of her roles because of this, Laura Linney does stand as an example of composed women in an industry where women are often depicted as runner ups to men as far as cold calculation or level headed thinking is concerned.
Yet She Doesn't Get Credit For... Linney's certainly well respected, and is attractive, but she does not have the completely drop dead gorgeous look of many women in film. Combined with the cold nature of many of her roles, this helps solidify the idea that she is "the practical woman", not the love interest, and not necessarily someone for normal woman to completely identify with or idolize. Which is a shame. She can show the suppressed pain of letting go of personal goals, such as in
Love Actually. She showed the strain placed on a wife trying to keep up with her husband's goals in
John Adams. Or, she can just be a woman trying to navigate the trials of life with a smile, such as
The Big C. She is probably never going to play the soft and delicate female perfectly. But despite what Hollywood wants people to believe, not all women have a soft, trembling, overly emotional and tear soaked center that just needs to be unlocked by the right man. Not all women have to (or get to) burst into tears and run through the rain for love, or fall into the arms of their prince at the end. Most of Linney's characters, like most actual women, don't have the time to wait, however subtlety, for a man to swoop in and solve their problems. They have lives of their own and jobs that they are just as eager to do, and as capable of doing, as any man. Laura Linney should get credit not only for her talent, but for representing that type of independent competent woman and not simply be labelled the "practical one."