2. Rooney Mara - Ain't Them Bodies Saints
Rooney Mara, the descendant of football royalty (her name derives from the Rooney's on her maternal side, owners of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and the Mara's on her paternal side, owners of the New York Giants), has had a fascinating career thus far. First coming to prominence in the small, but crucial role of Erica Albright (ex-girlfriend of Mark Zuckerberg whose scorn, according to the film, sparked the motivation for Facebook) in David Fincher's The Social Network, she then re-teamed with Mr. Fincher just one year later to bring the popular literary character Lisbeth Sanders to life in the American adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Somewhat surprisingly given the stark, macabre nature of the film, her performance in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo earned her the first Oscar nomination of her young career. This put her in high demand for many a great auteur, leading her to upcoming appearances in films by the likes of Terrence Malick and Spike Jonze, as well as the brilliant and underrated performance she already gave this year in what is supposedly Steven Soderbergh's swan song, Side Effects. It is her work though with a much lower profile director, David Lowery, that might earn her the most plaudits. Ain't Them Bodies Saints debuted at Sundance this year to fairly good notices. Described as Malick-esque, the film tells the story of a Texas outlaw (Casey Affleck) who escapes prison in order to return to his wife (Rooney Mara) and the daughter he has never seen, only to discover she has moved on with her life. It sounds like a solid premise and even those that were not so high on the film itself still were exuberant about the performances for the leads. The key question will be whether the film receives enough exposure to be a legitimate awards player. The film is being distributed by IFC Films, which hasn't had the best of luck with Oscar thus far. Even if the film does get enough recognition, it may turn out to be just too prickly of a pare for the Academy's Actors Branch, but if the performance is good enough, hopefully merit alone will be enough to warrant a nomination.