Best Actress Oscar: Body of work or single performance?

There's always much debate and discussion this time of year. It has nothing to do with taxes or college basketball, but rather, the Oscars.

Always hotly contested, the competition for the Best Actress statue has reached a boiling point the last couple years. Last year, it was Team Sandra versus Team Streep. This year, it's Natalie Portman versus Annette Bening. 

I spent this weekend in L.A. with a group of young women, from 22 to 33 years old, and we discussed past Best Actress Oscar winners. The funny thing is, our favorite actresses tend to be about twenty or thirty years our senior.

One of the points that was brought up was: should an Oscar be based on one performance or should it take into consideration the body of work. Typing that out, it seems silly, because Oscars are based on one performance. An Oscar nomination is for one movie, it's not a lifetime achievement award. Sometimes it's hard to remember that, though, when you take into consideration things like: Charlize Theron: one Oscar, Laura Linney: zero Oscars. Halle Berry: one Oscar, Patricia Clarkson: zero Oscars. Meryl Streep: a zillion nominations, only two Oscars. 

So even though the nomination is based on one performance, it's hard to feel celebratory when some of the greatest actresses of their generation are getting passed over for younger actresses who have, let's face it, pretty flimsy bodies of work.

As my sister said, she finds it hard to love young actresses. Why is that? Hollywood certainly loves them. They're constantly getting cast in the next big thing. 

Maybe it's like the Lady Gaga versus Madonna argument. You cannot claim Lady Gaga is the new Madonna until she's been around for thirty years and reinvented herself umpteen times. Only then I will concede that yes, she is. 

Can you claim that someone is a great actress because she gave an amazing performance in The Blind Side? Have we forgotten she was in The Lake House? Speed 2? Hope Floats? Sorry, Sandy.

On the other hand, the argument for actresses like Sandra Bullock and Reese Witherspoon and Charlize Theron would be if only those actresses who have a deep body of work were nominated and won an Oscar every year, it would be a pretty small pool. And Meryl Streep, as much as I love her, doesn't really need fifteen Oscars.

So on Sunday, I'll just try to forget about Annette Bening's performances in American Beauty and Being Julia. Although, in my mind, the swan queen will never outrank singing Joni Mitchell at the dinner table.