73. ALFRE WOODARD
Crooklyn (1994)

If anyone could make you eat your black-eyed peas, it's Woodard. As the tough and loving matriarch of a 1970s Brooklynite clan, Woodard nails the complex, maddening duality of motherhood. One minute she's hollering at five rambunctious kids, the next she's engaging her daughter in a heart-to-heart. When Woodard's character succumbs to cancer, we feel the heartbreak as our own.