Best Supporting Actress

Toni Collette
About a Boy

Best Supporting Actress was another hotly contested battle during most of the voting. In the end, though, About a Boy's Toni Collette was easily the winner in the category. Oddly, her margin of victory belies the fact that she was only tied for second in number of first place selections by the BOP staff. The reason for her success is her nomination on 78% of the ballots. Not everyone thought she gave the best performance of the year but we were universal in our support of her performance. It's not easy to play a suicidal woman trying to be a good mother while still managing to sing with your eyes closed. Collette manages to pull off the task while simultaneously remaining believable and sympathetic.

Emily Watson's work in Punch-Drunk Love was impressive enough to secure second place. Ms. Watson had quite a year as an actress. Her work as a blind woman in love with a dangerous man in Red Dragon almost garnered her an additional berth in this category. As in that film, she plays a character who is drawn to a badly damaged man. In this case, her compassion and unusual perspective on life allow her to see the strength within Adam Sandler's Barry Egan and overlook his ahem aggressive tendencies. Not many actresses could successfully deliver the following line: "I love you so much I want to rip out your eyeballs and suck on them and then punch you in the nuts." Watson's ability to utter this irony in a fashion which made many a BOPer's heart swoon was enough to require us to reward her for her effort.

Finishing in third is Samantha Morton. Since she plays a prophet, there was an assumption that she would have an unfair advantage in the selection process. Unfortunately, like in the movie, she wound up being flushed out out of the top spot. Voters were haunted by her portrayal of a prescient woman trapped in a liquid cage by a malevolent group of utilitarian government officials. Many of the people who nominated her weren't even huge fans of Minority Report, but they uniformly mentioned her as the best part of the film.

Coming in fourth was Catherine Zeta-Jones for her singing of All That Jazz. She was also in Chicago as an actress, but a straw poll indicates it's the opening sequence of the film which won her the lion's share of her votes. Mrs. Douglas was a feast or famine selection, as she was only selected on seven ballots yet she finished with four first place votes and six top three nominations. People who liked her performance really liked it.

Meryl Streep's work in Adaptation was judged to be her superior effort of 2002, so she is rewarded with fifrth place in our voting. The greatest actress of her generation again displays her innate gift for sinking into a part in this, one of her more difficult efforts. Streep was forced to walk the fine line of portraying a very real author in a way best described as a mad-cap, fictitious psychopath. The duality captivated our staff and made her a popular choice for nomination in the category.

The rest of the top ten showed some interesting choices. Queen Latifah's role in Chicago was considered limited by some critics, but our staff found it to be a foundation for the interplay of Zellweger and Zeta-Jones. Similarly, Patricia Clarkson's role in Far from Heaven would have been quite generic in the hands of most thespians. Instead, she took it and made it into a memorable part as the easily scandalized suburbanite. In a film with a cast as large as The Two Towers, it's hard to stand out but Miranda Otto's pretty face and lusty eyes for Viggo made our cabinet go glazed on more than one occasion. A surprise pick in ninth place was Hope Davis, whose work in About Schmidt was criticized by some as ungrateful. Several of our staff disagreed and felt she struck a powerful emotional chord as the disenchanted, struggling daughter who doesn't know her father and is forced to come to terms with the unexpected death of her mother. Finally, Solaris is a complicated film which many people hate, but none of those individuals seem to come from our site. It got several nominations across categories, and some of our voters were passionate about Natasha McElhorne. George Clooney's character succeeds or fails based on his relationship with her, so it's imperative that she make the most out of her limited screen time. We feel she succeeds to a vast degree, and were therefore driven to laud her effort. (David Mumpower/BOP)

Top Ten
Position	Actress	Film	Total Points
1	Toni Collette	About a Boy	100
2	Emily Watson	Punch-Drunk Love	84
3	Samantha Morton	Minority Report	83
4	Catherine Zeta-Jones	Chicago	75
5	Meryl Streep	Adaptation	72
6	Queen Latifah	Chicago	48
7	Miranda Otto	The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers	43
8	Patricia Clarkson	Far from Heaven	37
9	Hope Davis	About Schmidt	34
10	Natasha McElhorne	Solaris	34