Vivien Leigh, Gone with the Wind

as SCARLETT O'HARA

Won: Academy Award - Best Actress | New York Film Critics Circle - Best Actress

As the story goes, in 1939 a little known actress came along to the states from across the pond and surprised everyone when she snatched up what author Helen Taylor called "the longest, most prestigious female role in Hollywood's most ambitious, epic film." This during a studio era in which the "star system was most fully developed and films were financed, promoted, and celebrated on individual star names..." The rest is simply glorious cinematic history.

When reading praises of fine performances one often runs across the exclamation that an actor simply is the character they're playing. And at the risk of making a redundant statement, Vivien Leigh just is Scarlett O'Hara. She embodies Scarlett. She delves deep into the depths of Scarlett and brings to life all that is beautiful and ugly about her. Scarlett O'Hara is a cesspool of mesmeric qualities; she is a spoiled princess, a flighty and impulsive brat, a manipulative minx, a stone-cold bitch...she is shameless, she is steadfast, she is vulnerable, she is delusional, she is bold as brass not just in her convictions but in the way she presents herself to the world. She is a whole 'lotta woman. To take on Scarlett O'Hara is to submit oneself into an acting boot camp, and Leigh is fantastically resilient in her tackling of this complicated and multifaceted heroine. What's amazing about this performance is the fluidity and the precision with which Leigh navigates Scarlett — she can be such a delight, as sweet as pie when she's faux-charming the people around her one second before turning around and making a cutting remark towards or about someone else the following second (bitchy Scarlett is, in my opinion, just to die for, and Leigh's bitchery helps make Scarlett all the more exquisite) Leigh handles these pivots in character effortlessly and makes it all look second-nature. With every different phase of life, every scene, every frame, Leigh nails all the different degrees of refraction that make up the Scarlett O'Hara spectrum. Whether she's to be a girlish coquette at the start of the film or a tired, battle-scarred woman by the film's conclusion, not a single moment of Scarlett's many transformations rang untrue. What's more, Leigh is hopelessly charming throughout it all. During a time when proper morals in films were forced onto the public, where female characters hardly deviated outside of the sweet and/or tragic archetypes, Scarlett stands out for her outright brazen selfishness. The beauty of this role and of Leigh's performance is that we applaud, root for and love her in spite of her inconsiderate ways. Leigh makes Scarlett impossible to hate even though Scarlett gives us all the reasons to hate her. Not many actors can succeed with the herculean task of carrying a massive, four hour Civil War epic rife with melodrama...but Leigh does it with aplomb, engaging us with every minute she's on screen. Perfectly synthesizing the self-centered shrew (for which we happily indulge in) together with a delicate and elegant chutzpah (for which we happily cheer on), this is a performance that forever immortalizes Leigh not only in cinema's iconography but as a heroine, as an actress, and as a symbol of Hollywood excellence.