Hottest Actress Breakouts
The movie roles that turned them into stars—sometimes overnight
Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose (2007)
After some modest success in France in the early Aughts, the dreamy-eyed Cotillard won the role of legendary singer Édith Piaf and an Oscar to boot in this epic, heartbreaking biopic. On the heels of that life-changing performance, she proved her range and enduring talent in such movies as Nine, Inception, Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, The Dark Knight Rises, The Immigrant and the Dardenne brothers’ stunning Two Days, One Night, for which she was Oscar-nominated yet again.
Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone (2010)
It’s hard to believe that only six years ago, few people outside of Louisville, Kentucky, knew who Jennifer Lawrence was. That is, until she glowered and powered her way through this low-budget gem, winning Sundance and Academy recognition as Ree, the hard-nosed Ozark Mountains teenager tending to her younger siblings and in search of their murdered father’s body. Superstardom soon followed: in X-Men: First Class, the Hunger Games mega-series, and an Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook.
Dorothy Dandridge in Carmen Jones (1954)
At a time when African-American leading ladies are fighting for recognition and roles on the big screen, it’s important to take note of Dorothy Dandridge, who got her big break in this landmark Otto Preminger musical as the titular Carmen Jones, a hard charging, high-note-hitting vixen in the World War II-era South, based on the opera Carmen, with Bizet’s music given lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. Though she was nominated for an Oscar, Dandridge’s fate in the film was chillingly echoed in real life, as she died mysteriously at the age of 42. None other than Halle Berry would play her in an HBO biopic decades later.
Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
In this seminal true-crime romance about America’s favorite Depression-era bank-robbing antiheroes, it was the unknown Dunaway that made off like a bandit. By holding her own alongside ’60s pretty boy Warren Beatty as the ill-fated country girl bent on adventure, Dunaway became a household name overnight and, after completing The Thomas Crown Affair only a year later, a bona fide star.
Sharon Stone in Total Recall (1990)
Before shocking the world with a simple re-crossing of her legs, Sharon Stone sharpened her teeth as Schwarzenegger’s two-timing, too-good-to-be-true wife in Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi hit. Coupled with her well timed Playboy spread that same year, Stone was shot into sex-symbol status overnight and sealed the deal in Verhoeven’s follow-up film, Basic Instinct, two years later.
Brigitte Bardot in …And God Created Woman (1956)
The blonde-haired, curvy and leggy Bardot was in a dozen middling French comedies when her husband and Svengali, Roger Vadim, cast her as Juliette, an adventurous orphaned teen who seduces everyone in her path. Overnight, the original movie “sex kitten” was born. Vadim would do it again with subsequent wives Catherine Deneuve and Jane Fonda.
Jessica Lange in King Kong (1976)
This ’70s reboot of the ’30s classic proves that recycling an old idea doesn’t preclude discovering something new altogether. Here, that something new happens to be a young blonde by the name of the Jessica Lange, who stepped into Fay Wray’s role as the object of Kong’s—and everyone else’s—desire. When watching the film, it’s Lange’s amazing screen presence, and not the giant Kong, that proves to be the 800-pound gorilla in the room.
Cameron Diaz in The Mask (1994)
Landing a lead role without ever having acted a day in her life—Diaz was a model by trade—she became a star the moment she showed up in a red, soaking wet dress. It should’ve been the 21-year-old Diaz’s Tina, not Jim Carrey’s cartoon-manic Mask, to announce sibilantly, “ssssomebody STOP me!”
Shailene Woodley in The Descendants (2011)
For her feature debut, Woodley was a touching and funny stand-out (and a Golden Globe nominee) as George Clooney’s troubled, bikini-clad teenage daughter in this Hawaiian family drama. From there she did a nice turn in The Spectacular Now, opposite Miles Teller, and in the popular weepie The Fault in Our Stars, and then, in Jennifer Lawrence’s wake, kicked some serious dystopian ass in the Divergent series.
Salma Hayek in Desperado (1995)
By casting the then unknown Hayek in this bigger-budget reboot of his no-budget debut film, the gritty shoot-’em-up El Mariachi, Texas filmmaker Robert Rodriguez showed that just because you’re making a B movie doesn’t mean you can’t have A-level talent. Partnered with Antonio Banderas, the smoldering Hayek literally stopped traffic, and the rubbernecking continues to this day.
Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday (1953)
Pixie haircut and waifish figure aside, there has always been something regal about Hepburn. That’s why it only seems right that after years of TV work, the real-life daughter of a duchess made her feature-film debut as an incognito princess. When the romantic romp through Rome with costar Gregory Peck ended, Hepburn took home an Oscar and never looked back.
Meryl Streep in The Deer Hunter (1978)
Her rout of Oscars and other awards not yet begun, the unknown Yale drama school grad took the role of a “vague, stock girlfriend” in order to have work with castmate John Cazale, her boyfriend, while he was terminally ill. Though her part was small, Streep lit up the screen as Linda, the long-suffering fiancé of a soldier AWOL in Vietnam (Christopher Walken) who takes up with his best friend (Robert De Niro). And of course, she was nominated for an Academy Award.
