And the Awards Go To...

 Jodie Foster
Actress in Carnage

An actress, producer, and director, Jodie Foster has made some great movies, from Taxi Driver in 1976 to The Brave One in 2007. Carnage is not her best film, but her performance, as always, elevates what some critics say might have been best left on the stage. (The Roman Polanski-directed film is an agile but claustrophobic adaptation of Yasmina Reza's play God of Carnage.) As two sets of parents come together to discuss a schoolyard fight between their kids, the film forays into the absurdly melodramatic world of affluence and contemporary parenthood. As Penelope Longstreet, Foster is didactic and excitable, an almost intentional caricature of liberal hypocrisy, and her battle scenes with Christoph Waltz (as a smarmy, workaholic attorney) rise above everything else. Both Foster and costar Kate Winslet were nominated for Golden Globes.