1. Natalie Portman - Black Swan
Other than the aforementioned categorically ambiguous performance from Lesley Manville in Another Year, there was no female character that drew me into her world and predicament as much as Natalie Porman's performance as Nina Sayers in Black Swan. In this supernatural Gothic thriller set in the highly competitive world of New York City Ballet, Nina must make the tough decision between grounded sanity and artistic sincerity. At the beginning of the film, Portman's Nina is about as sweet and naive as someone her age could be (probably unrealistically so for a girl who has made it as far as she had already, but then again, Black Swan ain't about realism, to put it mildly), but as we watch Alice plummet deeper into the proverbial rabbit hole, it becomes apparently clear that there is no getting off this acid trip. The pressure Nina feels from all sides is extremely intense (like the water being held back by the Hoover Dam), and the at first subtle deterioration of the human mind caused by this sort of pressure is handled with appropriate intensity on Portman's part. She does her best to handle it all in stride, but soon holes begin the spring in the dike and the stress begins to manifest itself in strange ways. The important part of Natalie Portman's performance is to never let on that she even has the slightest clue to what is really happening. The slightest wink of the eye throws the whole thing off, but Natalie does not even for one second show her hand and play for camp, keeping the audience riveted to their seats. The only part of her performance where it begins to tear at the seams, and this is especially true for the movie as a whole, is in its over-the-top and all too fitting finale, where the film starts to become a bit predictable. As Nina completely lose her mind, the insanity is laid on a bit thick by Portman, but I believe the problem here lies more with the script and direction than her performance. Despite this small criticism, Portman's is a wonderfully captivating performance, creating one of the best heroines in modern cinema.
That's my take on the category, but let know your feelings on the nominees, as well as performances you think should have been nominated, in the comments section down below.