Hottest Actress Showdown

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Tap a size to start playing — free, no sign-up.

Two faces, one pick, no justification required. The bracket makes no claim to be anything more sophisticated than exactly that.

The interesting part is watching your own criteria slip round by round. The first is pure reaction.

By the fourth, most people are weighing something else entirely — a performance that landed, a character they carried around for a while afterwards, a role that was considerably better than the film containing it. Somebody widely considered more beautiful will lose to somebody who was in the right thing at the right moment in the voter's life, and the voter will not register that the question has quietly changed.

The list runs to eighty-three actresses, with several of their better known roles listed so that the comparison has something to sit on beyond a photograph.

Images are from Wikimedia Commons, which means premieres and press events rather than magazine shoots. That is a meaningful difference — these pictures are far less controlled than the industry standard, and the bracket is a more level contest because of it.