Amy Adams' Ashley
One of the intriguing things about acting is how much of an imagined script can an actor or actress put to life?
Reese Witherspoon won best actress award at the Oscars for depicting June Carter, the wife of Johnny Cash. And Philip Seymour Hoffman was awarded best actor as he put Truman Capote back to life.
Hoffmann apparently watched hours and hours of Capote footage in order to personify him. Which he did to an uncanny degree.
Reese Witherspoon did the same for her role, watching footage and videos to get her "Junisms" just right, as well as learning to sing in Junes "tilting inflections".
But a quiet little movie called Junebug lost out on Best Actress Oscar. Based on a Southern boy who returns home from Chicago with his new wife, it has a ring of truth to it because the screen writer himself is from North Carolina. But the young actress, Amy Adams grew up in Colorado.
Yet, Amy was able to build this character just from the magic of the screen play to show us a fully formed, slightly otherworldly, but totally believable Ashley.
Now, who is worth of an Oscar, someone who creates a character out of nothing, or someone who assiduously studies a live one and just portrays him?