The nominees for the Academy Award for Best Actress of 1991 are:
Geena Davis, Thelma & Louise
Laura Dern, Rambling Rose
Jodie Foster, The Silence of the Lambs
Bette Midler, For the Boys
Susan Sarandon, Thelma & Louise
The ceremony was held in March 1993, but everyone knew who'd win this category back in February 1991: Jodie Foster and her film were much of a phenomenon to ignore:
But the other nominees had their own interesting stories. Dern, daughter of actors Bruce Dern and (fellow nominee) Diane Ladd, received the script for Rambling Rose from director Martha Coolidge, who had trouble finding financing; Dern went to then-connected director Renny Harlin (whom she was living with) and he got the movie made. Midler produced For the Boys, campaigned hard despite it being a financial flop, put in the work to get her passion project the notice it needed.
And then we have Davis and Sarandon of the much-discussed Thelma & Louise, both playing titular characters, neither of them pretending to be a supporting role to cheat the system. This was the last time two nominees from the same movie would show up in the Lead Acting categories, seven years after the Amadeus boys. It is said that, because neither of them won, studios began to push movies with two leads of the same gender as, surprise, a Lead/Supporting two-hander. Dishonest, sure, but it does remove the stress from one problem: in a film with two equally great leads, who do you rank above the other?
My rankings, from fifth to first, below:
