The nominees for the Best Supporting Actress of 1991:
Diane Ladd, Rambling Rose
Juliette Lewis, Cape Fear
Kate Nelligan, The Prince of Tides
Mercedes Ruehl, The Fisher King
Jessica Tandy, Fried Green Tomatoes
What a lineup! The only one from a Best Picture nominee is The Prince of Tides' Kate Nelligan as Nick Nolte's mother, but even though she had won some critics' awards - and would win the BAFTA Award in this category for the next year (again, those pesky release dates!) - her presence here is somewhat a surprise: all her other honors were for her performance in Frankie and Johnny. Jessica Tandy was enjoying a career renaissance following her Best Actress win for 1989's Driving Miss Daisy; fried Green Tomatoes gave her another Southern eccentric to play, the story's narrator. Then-17-year-old Juliette Lewis broke out in a big way as Nick Nolte and Jessica Lange's rebellious daughter in Martin Scorsese's Southern Grande Guignol Cape Fear. And of course, the great Diane Ladd, here for a third time for her matriarch in Rambling Rose.
But there was no beating The Fisher King's Mercedes Ruehl, she was having a moment. By 1991, she had already won acclaim for her performance in Married to the Mob and won the Tony Award for the original Broadway run of Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. With The Fisher King, she got a showcase role in a movie that topped the box office for two consecutive weeks, earning critical praise and critics' awards - hell, even though the Los Angeles Film Critics honored Life is Sweet's Jane Horrocks as the Best Supporting Actress of the year, they fudged placement and named Ruehl their Best Lead Actress - people were eager to award her! Eventually, the Academy got in on it:
My own rankings, from fifth to first:
5. Kate Nelligan as Lila Wingo Newbury
The Prince of Tides
only nomination; NYFCC Awards second runner-up for Best Supporting Actress (with Frankie and Johnny)
We see Nelligan as Mom, quietly rebellious in her clapboard house against a tough husband, scarred by a night of horror she doesn't want to remember, transformed years later into a bleached, prim Lady, who hides her shame behind a veneer of Respectability. Very little connective tissue here, an odd nomination. Did they mean to nominate her for Frankie and Johnny?
4. Mercedes Ruehl as Anne Napolitano
The Fisher King
only nomination; Golden Globe winner for Best Supporting Actress, LAFCA Awards winner for Best Actress
One of those performances I really liked during the movie, but is maybe the fifth one I think of when I remember this movie. But she's great! All I know is, I believed her in every single moment she was on screen. The double date and the girls' talk with Amanda Plummer were especial favorite scenes of mine, though I also liked just watching her exist among the clientele and sad boyfriend at her video store.
3. Jessica Tandy as Ninny Threadgoode
Fried Green Tomatoes
past winner, second and final nomination; BAFTA Awards nominee for Best Actress [1992], Golden Globe nominee for Best Supporting Actress
She is a treat, someone you do want to sit with and listen to, and she's surprisingly funny and wise when she doesn't mean to be and forthright at the right moments. She's great whether she's onscreen or a voiceover narrator.
2. Diane Ladd as Mother Hillyer
Rambling Rose
third and final nomination; Indie Spirits winner for Best Supporting Female; Golden Globe nominee for Best Supporting Actress
A middle-aged housewife getting her masters degree, forced to wear a hearing aid, seemingly clueless about the “loose” ways of her new maid, who's got an eye on her husband and entertains the flirtations of her son: this should be an embarrassing figure of fun, a mocking portrait of Southern housewives who turn a blind eye. Not so with Ms. Ladd, who believably portrays her defending of Rose as not born out of naivete, but out of understanding, genuine compassion and true, unquestioned Christian charity. A class act...and, yes, still also a comic performance.
1. Juliette Lewis as Danielle Bowden
Cape Fear
only nomination; Golden Globe nominee for Best Supporting Actress, NSFC Awards runner-up for Best Supporting Actress, NYFCC Awards second runner-up for Best Supporting Actress
Lewis plays rebellious teen tropes - the pot smoking, the antagonism towards the parents, the too-trusting nature towards a strange man, even as you see the alarm bells going off behind her eyes - but she never gives in to teen actor histrionics…even when the movie dials it up. That mix of fear and attraction is played so brilliantly…she’s a star.
Next up, the nominees for Best Actor: Warren Beatty (Bugsy), Robert De Niro (Cape Fear), Anthony Hopkins (The Silence of the Lambs), Nick Nolte (The Prince of Tides), and Robin Williams (The Fisher King)
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