The 100 Best Female Characters in Film

Rose Sayer (played by Katharine Hepburn) in The African Queen: A middle-aged spinster shoots the Whitewater rapids of the Dark Continent with a sweaty, cussing skipper, and beams post-coitally, "Now that I've had a taste of it, I don't wonder why you love boating, Mr. Allnut." What other character could have given Hepburn a chance to experience the Big O on-screen?

Sera (played by Elisabeth Shue) in Leaving Las Vegas: The newest member of cinema's elite club of beautiful losers.

Catherine Sloper (played by Olivia de Havilland) in The Heiress: A Jamesian masterpiece of a woman, Catherine gets exquisite, if Pyrrhic, revenge on looker Montgomery Clift not so much for lusting after the money she has, as for not lusting after the beauty, charm and wit she doesn't have.

Cora Smith (played by Lana Turner) in The Postman Always Rings Twice: She's cheap, self-deluded, hot-blooded, homicidal. In other words, a Hard Copy calendar girl, way before her time.

Clarice Starling (played by Jodie Foster) in The Silence of the Lambs: Hannibal the Cannibal loves her enough to refrain from mixing her with fava beans. She needs no further endorsement.

Annie Laurie Starr (played by Peggy Cummins) in Gun Crazy: A money-and-gun-obsessed carnival markswoman who shoots up much of the nation's countryside the instant she finds the guy who really makes her trigger-happy.

Sue Ann Stepanek (played by Tuesday Weld) in Pretty Poison: A true-blue American psychoteen who gets straight to the point and shoots her mother.

Milly Stephenson (played by Myrna Loy) in The Best Years of Our Lives: When her husband comes home from war, she refrains from applying her emotional energies to the task of trying to understand either what he's been through or what he's going through now, and reserves them for unpresumptuous tolerance.

Frances Stevens (played by Grace Kelly) in To Catch a Thief. "I'm sorry I ever sent her to finishing school," carps her nouveau riche mother. "I think they finished her there." Oh shut up.

Anne Sullivan (played by Anne Bancroft) in The Miracle Worker: Tough love in action.

Thelma and Louise (played by Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon) in Thelma & Louise: They're mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore, and like most people who are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, they must die. But, as exemplary feminists, they do the job themselves.

Judith Traherne (played by Bette Davis) in Dark Victory: Trash cinema's persuasive argument that the best fate for a society playgirl is an early death.

Catherine Tramell (played by Sharon Stone) in Basic Instinct: Dresses like Grace Kelly (sans panties), kills like Norman Bates (sans mother).

Vivian (played by Lauren Bacall) in The Big Sleep: One of the coolest, most sardonic, most glamorous rich girls ever to hit noir. Whether you want to be her or sleep with her, she's your best defense against going nuts trying to follow the plot she's embroiled in.

Matty Walker (played by Kathleen Turner) in Body Heat: A woman who can wear a red skirt like nobody's business and mean it when she says, "You're not too smart, are you? I like that in a man."

Lucy Warriner (played by Irene Dunne) in The Awful Truth: Cinema's wittiest, smartest, loveliest and most stylish lesson in how to avoid the ugliness and drudgery of playing the Wronged Wife.

Lena Younger (played by Claudia McNeil) in A Raisin in the Sun: A wise South Side Chicago widow who finds herself locked in the conflict between Old School black vs. New.

Sophie Zawistowska (played by Meryl Streep) in Sophie's Choice: You expect that a woman of such luminous and live beauty is energized by secrets. The beauty becomes indelible when you discover there is just one secret, and it is calamity.

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Virginia Campbell is one of Movieline's executive editors; Stephen Rebello interviewed Salma Hayek for the Jan/Feb '97 issue of Movieline.

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