1. Rachel Getting Married (2008)
With Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married, Anne Hathaway received her first Oscar nomination. It was a well-deserved honor, for this naturalistic, deftly-handled lead performance might remain her best into the future. Though it doesn’t have the same grandiose lavish as Hathaway’s astonishing Les Miserables performance, her brittle, disarming performance is authentic, powerful, and unabashed. She portrays a gritty, grounded sincerity, dark undercurrent, and unflinching realism that’s rarely ever portrayed so believably, nor with so much impactful emotional gravitas, from an A-list actress of Hathaway’s stature.
