Dylan BAKER
His deeply chilling work as pedophile Bill Maplewood in Happiness doesn't paint a sympathetic portrait of a child molester, as some critics alleged. Rather, Baker evokes the tragedy of a seemingly decent man who's overcome by his twisted compulsion to rape young boys while simultaneously etching an acidly comic caricature of the Perfect Suburban Dad. Baker's done powerful work before, on TV (Murder One, Law & Order) and on stage. But with this miraculously ironic feat of acting, Baker truly becomes electric.
Cate BLANCHETT
In the ripping costume drama Elizabeth, Blanchett gloried in the most stunning transformation of the year, mutating from lusty, winsome princess to the frigid omnipotence of a Virgin Queen. Blanchett's very skin seemed to calcify, her eyes turn to stone, with the hardening of Elizabeth's heart. And we thought only Judi Dench knew how to rule England.
Lisa KUDROW
We've known Kudrow over four seasons of Friends as fluff-headed Phoebe, and as fluffed-to-the-max Michele in Romy and Michele's High School Reunion. But this year, the Emmy-awarded Kudrow starched her fluff in Friends when Phoebe birthed triplets and maternal instincts kicked in. She did authoritative film work, too. In The Opposite of Sex, Kudrow gave one of the hoariest of roles--the Spinster Schoolteacher--a fresh spin. Squaring off against the intimidating Christina Ricci, her Lucia held the screen as the lone voice of reason and common sense. Consider yourself kudo'd, Kudrow.
Samuel L. JACKSON & Kevin SPACEY When is a mindless action flick not a mindless action flick? Answer: when it stars two guys with the collectively devastating acting chops of Jackson and Spacey. In last summer's tight and tense cat-and-mouse hostage thriller The Negotiator, Jackson and Spacey rip into their scenes together like a pair of rabid pit bulls clawing for the same juicy bone. Consider it the tete-a-tete debut of the thinking man's Stallone and Schwarzenegger.
Buena Vista SOCIAL CLUB
No, the hottest Cuban import this year wasn't a box of smuggled cigars, but rather a group of 20 stellar old-school Cuban musicians brought together by American guitarist Ry Cooder. The band captured the sound of pre-Castro Cuba--and ignited a Cuban music explosion in the States--with its self-titled Grammy-winning Buena Vista Social Club album. Nobody suspected Americans might actually hear these elderly masters in person, but practice, practice, and political detente brought the Club to Carnegie Hall on July 1, for its first and only North American concert--a thrilling performance in which spontaneous humanity triumphed over paranoid geopolitics.
Kathy BATES Hell hath no fury like a Bates character scorned (witness Misery, Dolores Claiborne, The Waterboy). But as Libby Holden, the dirty-tricks campaign guru of Primary Colors, the actress concocted her most affecting tantrums yet as a politico who comes fully loaded. Holding a pistol to a blackmailer's crotch, she warns, "I am a gay lesbian woman. I do not mythologize the male sexual organ!" By movie's end, Bates has gone beyond busting cojones--she breaks your heart.
