Jennifer Lawrence – Winter’s Bone
Most actors will improve on their big break-out performance, if for no other reason than years of experience, maturity and honing of ones craft usually leads to increased quality. Edward Norton has arguably not improved on Primal Fear (although Fight Club and especially American History X might argue otherwise) and Jennifer Lawrence has definitely not improved on Winter’s Bone. Given that she won a much-merited Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook and has given us (in, lest we forget, only a few short years) The Hunger Games, American Hustle and X-Men: First Class, this is clearly not to say that Winter’s Bone was a freak high point for an otherwise middling actor. Instead, Winter’s Bone stands above an admittedly high-caliber crowd as a so-far unsurpassed exercise in immersive, convincing acting.
That year, Natalie Portman was hoovering up every award going for her work in Black Swan, but it seems likely that in most any other year Lawrence would have taken home the gold. Her performance in Winter’s Bone is remarkably contained, though not cold or insular. Instead she is focused, strong, resilient and determined, persevering in a remarkably matter of fact way through traumatic and physically painful turns of events. Seeing no other option before her other than proving her father’s demise, she proceeds through hostile (in every sense) territory with all the conviction of Ethan Edwards.
