In honor of these two recently Oscar-nominated English actresses, I thought I'd take a little time out from talking about my movie Foreign Correspondents to have some fun with the List of 9.
- Both actresses made their big screen debuts as historical characters. (KW as Juliet Hulme in Heavenly Creatures, HBC as Lady Jane Grey in Lady Jane)
- Both have portrayed Ophelia in screen adaptations of Hamlet. (KW in the Branagh version, HBC in the Zeffirelli/Mel Gibson version)
- Both had to endure love scenes with Kenneth Branagh. (KW again in Hamlet, HBC in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein)
- Both have played Emma Thompson's sister. (KW in Sense and Sensibility, HBC in Howards End)
- Both have played Americans. (KW in Titanic, HBC in Mighty Aphrodite)
- Both have done voices for animated films. (KW in Faeries, HBC in Carnivale)
- Both have played the lovers of famous murderers. (KW again in Heavenly Creatures as Pauline Parker's soulmate, HBC as Lee Harvey Oswald's wife Marina in the TV movie Fatal Deception)
- Both have spent the vast majority of their careers acting in period dramas. (Films too numerous to mention)
- Both have been nominated for the Best Actress Oscar for 1997 films that take place in the 1910s, where each actress plays a young single woman of means who defies her elder female guardian's wishes and pursues a passionate romance with a working-class man instead of marrying a boring, wealthy heel, and winds up getting naked at some point. (KW in Titanic, HBC in Wings of the Dove)