We're game.
There are a lot of obvious choices but, for our money, the worst actress of the last 100 years is Joanne Woodward.
For an Academy Award winner to have given even one of the bad performances Woodward has is shocking because she's never merely bad, she's hold-your-nose-this-stinks! bad. In later years especially, Shelly Winters could be hammy But compared to Woodward, Winters was always a model of restraint.
The Three Faces of Eve is her award winning role. And even that, in retrospect, is questionable.
There's no bold line separating a good performance by Woodward from a bad one. In fact, there's not much difference in any of Woodward's performance. She may alter the externals (such as accent) a little, but it's the same recycled performance she's been serving up since the 50s.
She's at her worst when she's cast in a role that requires her to be alluring. Often, in such roles, she'll go over the top with the externals. She'll load up with tics like the worst stereotype of Method acting but those tics will never suggest a real person.
The Stripper. Yes, Woodward really played the title role in that film.
A plain woman on a good day, Woodward was a challenge for hair and make up that they never managed to pull off.
In A Fine Madness, she's Sean Connery's wife and she's so awful the film makers apparently expected audiences to forgive Connery for everything from cheating on her with Jean Seberg and others to slugging her at the very end on the streets of New York as she brays at him repeatedly to just hit her and get it over with.
If you've never seen A Fine Madness, it's supposed to be a romantic comedy.
Grating is the most obvious adjective for any of Woodward's roles and one-note accompanies it. In fact, she is so consistently bad that the only way you may be able to separate one role from another is to pay attention to what wig she's wearing.
