91. Jane Fonda as Bree Daniels
      Klute (1971)

Bree Daniels is no stereotypical hooker with a heart of gold. Fonda, in her first Oscar-winning performance, turns her into an open emotional wound. At first the actress wasn’t sure she should play the role. After hanging out with real-life pimps and prostitutes for a week, she says, “The overwhelming feeling I got from them was that their souls had been crushed. I had the feeling if I played Bree that way nobody would care.” And when none of the pimps tried to pick her up, “that made me feel I wasn’t right for this part.” Instead, she chose to play Bree as someone slightly closer to home: an actress who turns tricks to make money on the side, someone whose “soul is still smoldering somewhere in there.”

Fonda lived in Bree’s apartment for a week of rehearsal and soon found herself improvising strange behaviors, like licking the cat spoon. “Things happen,” she says, “when you’re inhabiting the character.” Another famous moment, when Bree checks her watch while pretending to be enjoying sex, was scripted—but Fonda didn’t find it too much of a stretch: “I just remembered the times I had done it myself.” And during the climactic confrontation with the murderer, she became so overwhelmed thinking about abused women that she burst into tears. “It was unplanned and electric,” she says, “and it surprised everybody, including me.”

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