Phoenix just embodies Cash heart and soul as he captures the stinger’s pain and inner struggle as he deals with addiction.
Phoenix’s relationship with Reese Witherspoon, who plays June carter, is simply captivating as the actress delivers an equally fine performance.
- Sean Penn - Harvey Milk
Sean Penn already had one Best actor Oscar under his belt when he took on the role of political Harvey Milk in 2009.
The story of Harvey Milk, and his struggles as an American gay activist who fought for gay rights and became California's first openly gay elected official.
Milk is an incredibly evocative movie and it is bursting with humour as well as warmth as well as having been made with a bucket load of passion.
It’s a fine turn from Penn as Milk and he went on to pick up a second Best Actor Academy Award for his fine performance.
- Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe
Michelle Williams picked up a Best actress Oscar nod earlier this year for her performance in Blue Valentine and she could make it two in a row with her performance in new movie My Week With Marilyn - a turn that is already being raved about.
In the early summer of 1956, 23 year-old Colin Clark, just down from Oxford and determined to make his way in the film business, worked as a lowly assistant on the set of ‘The Prince and the Showgirl’, the film that famously united Sir Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe, who was also on honeymoon with her new husband, the playwright Arthur Miller.
Nearly 40 years on, his diary account ‘The Prince, the Showgirl and Me’ was published, but one week was missing and this was published some years later as ‘My Week with Marilyn’ - this is the story of that week.
When Arthur Miller leaves England, the coast is clear for Colin to introduce Marilyn to some of the pleasures of British life; an idyllic week in which he escorted a Monroe desperate to get away from her retinue of Hollywood hangers-on and the pressures of work.
And there are also a couple of other biopic performances that we should be looking out for in the new year; Leonardo DiCaprio will play J Edgar Hoover in Clint Eastwood’s J Edgar while Meryl Streep is set to star as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady.
My Week With Marilyn is released 25th November.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Tagged in Michelle Williams