13 Bravest Acting Performances Of 2014

9. Julianne Moore As Alice Howland & Havana Segrand - Still Alice & Maps To The Stars

Julianne Moore has had such a splendid year that it's impossible to just pick one bravura performance, so here's two. Firstly, Moore turned heads with her astonishingly restrained work as a professor suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's disease in Still Alice, which is never an easy ask for any actor, but Moore brings a ton of dignity to a part that refuses to patronise or suffocate the central character in disease movie cliches. Unsurprisingly, she's a frontrunner for this year's Best Actress Oscar, which would be her fifth nomination and hopefully, finally, her first win. Moore's other ballsy turn this year was in a movie sure to earn zero Oscar nominations, David Cronenberg's wild Hollywood satire Maps to the Stars. Playing psychologically scarred, aging actress Havana Segrand, Moore delivers a deeply unflattering, no-holds-barred performance which includes one especially unsavoury scene on a toilet, and walks a delicate balancing act of being both hilarious and incredibly depressing. For her fine work, she won the Cannes Film Festival's Best Actress award.