80. Catherine Tramell (Basic Instinct)
The Character: Best-selling writer of crime novels like Basic Instinct whose inventive 𝔍kills are being borrowed by a killer. Unless, of cour💝se, she's the killer.
The Actress: After muddling through the 1980s, Sharon Stone's break came as Arnie's wife in Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall. So whe🃏n every other actress passed on playing Catherine, Verhoeven set up a rematch.
The Performance: Unavoidable. Stone knew she'd get noticed 🎐for this, and didn't hold back, although it's her slinky int🌟elligence as much as the nudity which makes her so watchable.
79. Phyllis Dietrichson (Double Indemnity)
The Character: The archetypal femme fatale, who seduces a haplessly horny fool in order to get him to murder her husband ♈for the Double Indemnity insurance money.
The Actress: Billy Wilder wanted to shock. What better choice than Barbara Stanwyck, fa🅺med as a comedienne and the highest paid actress in Hol🔥lywood?
The Performance: Stanwyck adapts her confi💟dent comedic timing into a sexual predator who gets what she wants: a new kind ꧃of role model.
78. Bess McNeill (Breaking The Waves)
The Character: Mentally disturbed Scotswoman in Breaking The Waves, whose life spirals into promiscuity and degradation after her o𒉰il rig worker husband is paralysed in an accident.
The Actress: The loss of Helena Bonham Carter - who bailed🔜 last-minute, aghast at the subject matter - became the gain of screen debutant Emily Watson, who had no such qualms.
The Performance: Watson's raw, fearless presence turns Lars Von Trier's p✱otentially pretentious yarn into a visceral tragedy.
77. Thelma Dickinson (Thelma And Louise)
The Character: Downtrodden housewife who's given o🐲n the road training in self-assertiveness by pal Louise when the ⛄killing of a would-be rapist sees them become scofflaws.
The Actress: Professional kook Geena Davis had impressed in leftfield roles (The Fly, Beetlejuice). Working with Ridley Scott provided the opportunity to cra♒sh the A-l♛ist.
The Performance: The yin to S♉usan Sarandon's yang, Davis gets the bigger character arc and better audience identification, learning to loosen up and getting to shag Brad Pitt.
76. Alabama Whitman (True Romance)
The Character: Call girl whose liaison with film geek Clarence Worley kickstarts a True Romance that will see her escape her pimp, be🗹 chased by the Mob and become a drug dealer.
The Actress: Hitherto regarded, if at all, as Rosanna's 🐻younger sister, Patricia Arquette donned blue bra and shades to leapfrog her sis in audience love.
The Performance: The first great Tarantino heroine, Alabama setꦚs the standard w🦋ith unabashed sexuality and some mean fighting moves.
75. Coraline (Coraline)
The Character: Young girl who feels neglected by her parents, but soon learns that the grass isn't greener when she finds an 'Other Mother' who wants to s❀ew buttons where her ꦉeyes are.
The Actress: Stop-motion animated by the great Henry Selick, but voiced by Dakota Fanning, an expert in memorable girl acting after Man on Fire and War of the Worlds.
The Performance: A typically sparky Fanning performance aids the film's success in navigating the pe𝓡rils of becoming either a𒊎n anodyne kids' movie or a outright horror flick.
74. Annie Porter (Speed)
The Character: L.A. passenger unwittingly forced to keep her bus driving above a Speed of 50mpm. Whi♑ch is ironic, considered she's only on the bus aft♉er being banned from driving for speeding.
The Actress: Sandra Bullock was really on the radar of genre buffs after supporting turns in The Vanishing and Demolition Man. But Speed was unignorable.
The Performance: Bullock's refreshing normality made her a contender for action's unlikeliest ever heroine, which of course is why she's so perfec🌞t in the role.
73. Kate 'Ma' Barker (Bloody Mama)
The Character: Real-life Bloody Mama who preꦐ🀅sided over the cutthroat Barker family of public enemies in the 1930s.
The Actress: Double Oscar-winner Shelley Winters, an irrepressible force of personality and a major coup for Roger Corman's drive-in riff on Bonnie and Clyde.
The Performance: Winters was never unafraid to let rip with her acting, and here sails🦋 way over the top to essay a vicious matriarch for whom family comes first.
72. Marge Gunderson (Fargo)
The Character: Jovial (and heavily pregnant) police chief of Brainerd - not Fargo - whose ജmaternity leꦆave gets put on hold when a faked kidnapping spirals into murder.
The Actress: Frances McDormand had first got noticed in the Coen Brothers debut and stuc🌱k close to them since. In fact, she mar♛ried Joel.
The Performance: McDormand's chipper personality anchors the bloody chaos with affectionate humanity, and brought a new level of matu♋rity to the Coens' ironic worldview.
71. Elisabet Vogler (Persona)
The Character: Famous stage actress in a mute meltdown in Persona, who'ওs sent to an island to recuperate with only chatty nurse Alman (Bibi Andersson) for company. Until the two kinda, sor⛦ta merge into one.
The Actress: Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann is indeliby linked with Ingmar Berman, appearing in nine films. It all started with Persona.
The Performance: Ullmann's serene impassivity takes on troubling hints of vampirism, as if she൲'s feeding on Alma's stories. She's unsettling doing very little at all.
