4. Ann Darrow - King Kong
It takes gumption to stick into the shoes of one of Hollywood's most famous roles, so when it was revealed that was playing the part of Ann Darrow in Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong, a lot of pre-film obituaries were written. After all, Fay Wray's portrayal of Darrow has gone down in filmic legend and is the main reason why Wray enjoys a star on the Hollywood walk of fame. The bar was very high, but in my opinion, Watts cleared it spectacularly. It wasn't just a brave move as shoe-stepping exercise up until this point, Watts had been more renowned for indie, auteur roles. Even The Ring wasn't a Hollywood blockbuster, and previous performances such as 21 Grams and Mulholland Drive weren't blockbuster affairs. Yet she took to the matinee-style performance like a duck to water, oozing charisma and class as the film's object of gorilla-lust. Though Peter Jackson's epic was of an almost biblical length, any time Watts shared the creen with the Andy Serkis-powered Kong, the whole thing sprang into life like nothing else. If anything, you've got to appreciate how hard it was for Watts to keep up this level of performance throughout the film she's in a lot of scenes, and a lot of CGI-heavy scenes at that. Much like acting in horror films, acting in a digitally-laden film can be a hard task for anyone, but whether she was acting with people or acting from within the grip of a gigantic gorilla, Watts pulled off the performance with consummate ease.