2. Rooney Mara - Carol
The best performance by a female at the cinema this year, Rooney Mara is stunning as Therese, the young woman in the throes of a love affair, enchanted by the eponymous Carol (Cate Blanchett) in her furs. Mara won Best Actress at Cannes for her turn in Todd Haynes masterwork, and this is surely the finest performance of her career. All doe-eyed longing and furtive glances and fidgeting hands, Mara is the embodiment of that nervous, sick-to-your-stomach felling of an impossible, irrevocable love, and her performance will strikes chords with anyone who has ever had that feeling (or will have it). To go further, Maras work here is some of the finest of the decade, and Im hard pressed to think of a performance that matches it in terms of nailing the absolutely devastating drain a doomed romance. Whenever Ive mentioned Carol of late, Ive stated that it would make a sublime companion piece to Brokeback Mountain (though not because they are both gay love films, because they are not: they are simply love films, regardless of whether they are gay or not), and the scene where Therese is sick definitely feels analogous with the one where Ennis (Heath Ledger) tries to wretch something up in the alleyway early on in Brokeback. Both scenes are powerful because they turn something abstract (love) into something physical (the act of vomiting), a notion that could be used to describe Rooney Maras whole wondrous performance.