What went right
As the country’s favourite English rose for nearly 20 years, you’re still mostly associated with playing politely spunky young British women in nice frocks. But you’ve always been eager to show off your thorns. Whether bludgeoning your best friend’s mother with a brick in Heavenly Creatures, shagging a neighbour on the washing machine to cope with suburban ennui in Little Children or having blue hair in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, you’ve rarely opted for convention. Even your reunion with Leonardo DiCaprio was unexpected, pouring bile over the fire lit by your romance in Titanic with the brutal “you’re not worth the trouble it would take to hit you” domesticity of Revolutionary Road. Oh, and you won an Oscar for playing a Nazi paedophile in The Reader!
What went wrong
You have five Oscar nominations and one win, yet you often seem too eager for further awards. You signed up for a number of earnest yet dull films, tailor-made to appeal to old white Academy voters and pretty much no one else. There was shrill death-row thriller The Life of David Gale, the star-studded yet stuffy remake of All the King’s Men and Jason Reitman’s Mills & Boon melodrama Labor Day. Like most actors, you were also eager to see yourself involved in a Subway sandwich promotion so sought out a franchise but picked wrong, choosing a campy villain role in the underwhelming Hunger Games-lite boredom of the Divergent series. Your eccentric choices continued but were head-scratching curios such as Alan Rickman’s gardening drama A Little Chaos and this month’s bananas Aussie revenge drama The Dressmaker.
What you should do next
First, it looks as your gong hunt might come up trumps as your supporting turn in Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs biopic could net you another Oscar in what looks like a weak year. But, in what could be a Norbit-esque move, your turn as a “Russian-Israeli mafia moll” in John Hillcoat’s violent heist thriller Triple 9 is cropping up in the same month – and could turn your fortunes the other way again.
What’s disappointing is that your future recently seemed so much brighter. You were attached to Yorgos Lanthimos’s post-Lobster period drama The Favourite, which would have allowed your freak flag to fly fruitfully, but it fell apart. What you need is another offbeat director to utilise your willingness to get a bit weird. Imagine playing Laura Dern’s role in Inland Empire, for example. Allying yourself with a film-maker such as David Lynch or even Lars von Trier could work wonders. Some of your best moments as an actor have involved breakdowns, and playing a damaged woman at the end of her rope could prove fruitful – especially with a director who would allow you to go all the way.
More in this series
There’s something about you, Cameron Diaz - here’s how to recapture it
No more directing, Russell Crowe, or going soppy
A titanic Von Trier meltdown could get you back on track, Kate Winslet
Hey, Ryan Gosling, you’ve given girls advice, now let us return the favour
You need discipline, Nicolas Cage. Call Michael Haneke!
