It’s time to scrap the Best Actress Oscar award
From our UK edition
If you tune in to the Oscars during the early hours of Monday morning, you’ll note – along with sickly fawning about contemporary motion pictures being high art, beautiful people in beautiful clothes, and the kind of feigned surprise that wouldn’t look out of place in a school production – two glaring anomalies in the line-up: ‘Best Actress’ and ‘Best Supporting Actress’. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has recognised a leading actress every year since 1929. It’s one of the oldest prizes for women in the arts. Back in the Twenties, when there was even less of a chance a studio would let a woman write or direct a film, winning Best Actress was the pinnacle of female achievement.
