Awards' season is officially over, culminating with last week's Academy Awards ceremony during which Kate Winslet and Penelope Cruz nabbed top prizes. For the month of February SheWired assembled a list of hot Oscar-bound women for your voting pleasure. Here is the definitive list of our Top 10 Women of the 2009 Academy Awards based on your votes.
Not only are the women on this list undeniably sexy, they were either nominated for an individual award or with their respective films at the 81st Annual Academy Awards. And Oscar-worthy performances are not the only reason these extraordinary women are worth our admiration. From lesbian roles to real-life Sapphic romances -- and crushes! -- these women are not shy when it comes to loving the ladies. And for that reason, all of these gorgeous women are winners!
Here is SheWired'sTop 10 Women of the 2009 Oscars!
10. Jeanette Hain: Best Picture, The Reader
German actress Jeanette Hain has done more international work than American, but this year she appeared in the Oscar-nominated film The Reader alongside one of our other long-time favorites, Kate Winslet. With piercing eyes and an always-sexy foreign accent, Hain is sure to generate some much-deserved American attention in the post-Academy Awards season.
Among her notable international roles was her portrayal of writer and rumored lesbian Annemarie Schwarzenbach in the 2001 film The Journey to Kafiristan. The film chronicled a several-month excursion taken by Schwarzenbach and close female friend and photographer Ella Maillart. While the relationship between the two has historically remained ambiguous, the film documenting their travels as well as their co-dependant and borderline obsessive relationship is often listed within the Gay and Lesbian genre.
9. Tarahi P. Henson: Best Supporting Actress, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Having racked up both television and film credits over the course of the past decade (including Lifetime’s The Division and Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys), the beautiful Taraji Henson is now earning Academy Award attention for her role in The Curious Case of Benamin Button.
She may play Brad Pitt’s mother in Benjamin Button, but in the 2006 film Smokin’ Aces, the Henson took on a different kind of leading lady role. Playing the role of a lesbian assassin named Sharice Watters, Henson had the pleasure of falling in unrequited onscreen love with costar Alicia Keys. A match made in heaven if you ask us.
8. Amy Adams: Best Supporting Actress, Doubt
After becoming a cult hit with her Oscar win for the Indie film Junebug, Amy Adams has gone on to earn roles in Cruel Intentions 2, Catch Me If You Can, Charlie Wilson’s War and even the recent Disney film Enchanted.
Even her Mormon upbringing didn’t scare Amy Adams away from sharing a lesbian kiss with actress Lauren German in the 2005 film Standing Still. Adams’ character in the film, Elise, is a young woman who is reunited with all her old friends the weekend of her wedding. One guest includes Elise’s former roommate and old flame, Jennifer (German). Most of the movie may have been a drunken, drug-induced frenzy of post-collegiate lost souls, but the passionate, forbidden-love kiss between Adams and German was definitely a highlight.
7. Marisa Tomei: Best Supporting Actress, The Wrestler
In her appearance on The Ellen Degeneres Show in January, Marisa Tomei discussed her recent very nude and very uninhibited role in The Wrestler. Playing the role of an exotic dancer who starts up a romance with professional wrestler Randy Robinson, played by Mickey Rourke, Tomei’s character spends much of the film engaged in some very raunchy lap-dancing.
When asked by Ellen about how she prepared for such a role, Tomei answered that she frequented certain clubs in the New York and Los Angeles areas and experienced many a lap dance herself during her preparation. According to her, “The lap dances…they throw those in for free. Or, for me they did…a lot of the lovely ladies [at the clubs] were happy to.”
Lucky her, and lucky dancers too.
6. Freida Pinto: Best Picture, Slumdog Millionaire
Her breakout performance in Slumdog Millionaire has quickly made Indian actress Freida Pinto an American star. With stunning good looks and the appeal of a new, fresh face on the Hollywood scene, Pinto is sure to earn more attention and more roles in her post-Slumdog Millionaire career. Having worked as a model and then an actress in commercial work, Pinto wisely chose Slumdog Millionaire as her first feature film performance.
Whether dressed in a traditional Indian sari or a red-carpet gown, Pinto turns heads both on-screen and off. Beautiful, talented and intriguing, Pinto has our attention for sure. Being relatively new in town, so to speak, not much about her personal life has been revealed yet. But when asked by the India Times what the hottest rumor she has ever heard about herself has been, Pinto responded: “Everyone thought I had a lesbian partner in college!” (Sigh) If only it weren’t just a rumor.
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Now, if it weren’t already the last season of The L Word, maybe we could convince her to fill the gaping hole in the cast left by the beautiful Sarah Shahi. Another dark-haired, exotic beauty in Shane’s life wouldn’t be a bad thing at all.
5. Penelope Cruz: Best Supporting Actress, Vicky CristinaBarcelona
After seeing her steamy overseas ménage-à-trois with actress Scarlett Johanson and actor Javier Bardem in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, it is hard to picture Penélope Cruz with anyone but another woman. Convincing and charismatic in her scenes with Johanson, she proved that she can hold her own in a lesbian scene. And now she has been nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role by the Academy Awards for her role in the love-triangle based Woody Allen film.
While Vicky Cristina Barcelona may be Cruz’s most recognizable line-blurring on-screen moment with another woman, it is not her only appearance in a lesbian scene during her career. She and her sister, in fact, have shared a lesbian kiss in a music video produced by their brother, Eduardo Cruz. And she had the pleasure of locking lips with Charlize Theron in Head in the Clouds.
Mexican tabloids in 2008 were also rumored to be reporting a love affair between Penélope Cruz and fellow Latin-American actress Salma Hayek. The rumors have turned out to be without merit, but a girl can dream, right?
4. Cate Blanchett: Best Picture, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
She made the cover of The Advocate when she was named “Coolest Straight Person of 2007,” and for good reason. That year, she took on the challenging, gender-bending role of Bob Dylan in I’m Not There under the direction of out director Todd Haynes who has since raved about her both personally and professionally. And after seeing her brilliant performance, it’s hard to imagine any other actress so successfully pulling off a male role.
And while Blanchett may not have any of her own lesbian romances hiding in her closet, she did appear as the object of Judi Dench’s obsessive affection in the 2006 film Notes on a Scandal. And two years later, Anne Hathaway boldly proclaimed that if there were any woman she would “go gay” for, it would be Blanchett. Looks like the queen of cool still reigns supreme, and maybe if we’re lucky we’ll catch her in more gender-bending or sexually adventurous roles soon.
3. Anne Hathaway: Best Supporting Actress, Rachel Getting Married
No one is more effortlessly likeable than Anne Hathaway. With her down-to-earth attitude and girl-next-door smile, she has managed to charm Hollywood directors, producers and fellow actors alike. Oh, and the entire gay community.
Hathaway had no qualms about putting her girl crush out there for all to see last year when she nonchalantly commented, “If I was going to go gay for another actress, it would have to be Cate Blanchett.” (A decision which, by the way, Anne, we totally agree with…) She then went on to be honored at not one but two high-profile gay events in 2008 – the HRC Los Angeles Awards Gala and the Trevor Project’s Cracked Xmas Event.
The HRC honored Hathaway with a coveted Ally Award, to which she responded with a moving acceptance speech that included the memorable lines: “I’m loving you, I support you, I completely accept you as you are, as I hope you do me, and if anyone EVER tries to hurt you, I’m going to give them hell.”
And to put the icing on the cake, when Hathaway appeared at the Trevor Project’s Cracked Xmas Event in December, she threw her hat into the ring during the charity auction and managed to raise a whopping $12,000 for the worthy cause. The lucky high-bidder earned an evening out with Hathaway – and Hathaway earned our undying love.
2. Kate Winslet: Best Actress, The Reader
The Office’s Jenna Fischer has said she would “go gay” for her, and we know we would, so Kate Winslet comes in on our list at number four. Maybe Jenna was inspired by Winslet’s lesbian kiss in the 1999 film Holy Smoke!, or perhaps it was her cover shoot for Vanity Fair this year (which featured Winslet reclining nude on a couch), but either way Winslet has captured the hearts of both male and female audiences for over a decade.
Most fans started taking notice sometime after her 1995 film Sense and Sensibility or 1997’s Titanic, but a few years earlier, her breakout performance in the film Heavenly Creatures featured Winslet as a teenage girl in an obsessive relationship with her best friend. Based on a true story, the characters played by Winslet and her costar were so inseparable that when one of their mothers begins to fear they might be lesbians (gasp!), the girls murder her in order to stay together. Dark, edgy, and rebellious – that’s a side of Kate Winslet we’d like to see again.
1. Angelina Jolie: Best Actress, Changeling
Her real-life romantic relationship with Jenny Shimizu may have been over a decade ago, but Angelina Jolie’s lesbian experience is never far from our minds. Between that and her on-screen role in the HBO film Gia (playing supermodel Gia Carangi), Jolie has cemented herself as the fantasy of many a lesbian. Having declared herself openly bisexual, she has been both a part of and a strong ally for the LGBT community throughout her career.
She and current partner Brad Pitt have stated that they will remain in a committed relationship without the recognition of a legal marriage until everyone in this country can legally be married. Pitt also made a generous $100,000 donation to the NO on 8 campaign this past year with Jolie’s public support.
