Mount Rushmore of Actresses

My last blog featured my top four favorite actors of my lifetime so I think it's only necessary to now do one on actresses.

Here are my top four ... and I know the movies I list aren't there only ones.

Sandra Bullock

I absolutely love Bullock. I know she doesn't have the resume of some of the other greatest actresses but I love most of what she's done.

My favorite movie that Bullock starred in was her breakthrough role as "Annie" in Speed. It was released in my prime teenage years, and I remember watching that  movie about 1,000 times as a child.

Her and Keanu Reeves had such good chemistry in that film.

Before Speed, she played a minor role in Demolition Man, which starred Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes. Stallone made my Mount Rushmore of actors and this is a movie they were both in.

Bullock was a star in the 1990s. After Speed came While You Were Sleeping and The Net in 1995, A Time To Kill in 1996 and Speed 2: Cruise Control in 1997. Hope Floats followed in 1998 and then came the famous Miss Congeniality and Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous in 2000 and 2005, respectively.

The Net is an underrated movie. Bullock's character works in computers and her identity gets stolen when she is on vacation. She spends the rest of the movie trying to get her real identity back. Love that one.

A Time To Kill was fantastic. It stars Matthew McConeghey and Samuel L. Jackson.

Bullock's busiest and most productive year was 2009. She made three movies that year, including The Proposal and The Blind Side.

Bullock won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as Leigh Anne Tuohy. I hear so many people say they hated this movie. Not sure why. But I may be in the minority. I loved it, and Bullock was fantastic in the lead role.

The Proposal was a fun flick with Ryan Reynolds. And it portrays Bullock as Reynolds' bitchy boss, which is different than most of her other roles.

After these two box-office hits, Bullock appeared in Gravity (2013), Minions (2015), Ocean's Eight (2018) and Bird Box (2018).

Minions is Bullock's highest grossing film and Bird Box had the largest debut week ever for a Netflix film.

Bullock also stands out for owning a production company called Fortis Films.

Demi Moore

One of my favorite actresses growing up was Demi Moore. She has to make my list.

Moore started out as a character on the wildly popular soap opera General Hospital and has been married to Bruce Willis and Ashton Kutcher.

As for her movies, I remember Moore first for her role in One Crazy Summer, which was released in 1986. If you haven't seen it, find it. It's a fun movie also starring John Cusack.

Moore's most popular films are no doubt Ghost and A Few Good Men. I could watch A Few Good Men every time it's on TV. And what a cast with Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Kevin Bacon, Keifer Sutherland, Cuba Gooding Junior and Kevin Pollack. So good.

Ghost is a great movie, too. And who doesn't love Patrick Swayze and Whoopi Goldberg?

Like Bullock, Moore also was wildly popular in the 1990s. After Ghost (1990) and A Few Good Men (1992) came Indecent Proposal in 1993, Disclosure in 1994, the Scarlet Letter in 1995 and the Juror and Striptease in 1996. Her final movie before a long break was G.I. Jane in 1997.

Disclosure and G.I. Jane were two others that saw Moore at her best.

The sex scenes with Michael Douglas in Disclosure were borderline soft porn. She portrayed the seductive boss of Douglas who tries to rekindle a former fling and gets sued for sexual harassment.

Moore gets treated horribly as a military woman in G.I. Jane. But earns the respect of the rest of her platoon before the movie ends.

She was paid $12.5 million to show her boobs multiple times in Striptease. And her most recognizable movie since coming back from her long break was Charlie's Angles: Full Throttle, which was released in 2003.

Julia Roberts

Roberts has played in wide variety of roles and is an Academy Award winner.

She played a supporting role in Steel Magnolias in 1989 before her breakthrough lead role as "Vivian Ward," a prostitute who plays alongside male lead Richard Gere, in Pretty Woman. It's probably her most popular film but not the one she won Best Actress for.

After Pretty Woman in 1990 came Hook and Sleeping with the Enemy in 1991, Pelican Brief in 1993 and Conspiracy Theory and My Best Friend's Wedding in 1997. Runaway Bride was another movie with Gere that came out in 1999.

Roberts' Best Actress Academy Award came in the 2000 flick Erin Brockovich, in which she plays the title character in a movie about an unemployed single mother who becomes a legal assistant that almost single-handedly brings down a California power company accused of polluting a city's water supply.

After Erin Brockovich came Ocean's Eleven in 2001 and Ocean's Twelve in 2004. She also played the voice of "Charlotte the Spider" in Charlotte's Webb that came out in 2006.

My wife and I liked the movie Valentine's Day, which came out in 2010. Roberts played a minor role in a movie that also starred Jessica Alba, Bradley Cooper, Jessica Biel, Kathy Bates, Jamie Foxx, Patrick Dempsey, Jennifer Garner, Ashton Kutcher, Anne Hathaway and Queen Latifah.

And if you haven't seen Wonder, which was released in 2017, I will recommend that one, too.

It's based on the New York Times bestseller and it tells the incredibly inspiring and heartwarming story of August Pullman, a boy with facial differences who enters the fifth grade, attending a mainstream elementary school for the first time. Roberts plays August's mother and Owen Wilson plays his father.

Pretty Woman grossed $466 million and Roberts' movies have made about $2.8 billion, which makes her one of the most bankable actresses in Hollywood. Her net worth was $170 million back in 2017.

Meryl Streep

I can't have a Mount Rushmore like this and not include Streep, who has been nominated for a record 21 Academy Awards. Of those 21 nominations, 17 came for Best Actress and she's won three times.

I first remember Streep for her role in Death Becomes Her, which came out in 1992 when I was 12. The River Wild is a fun movie that came out a few years later.

I grew up in Earlham, Iowa, which was a few miles from most of the Madison County bridges. Streep, of course, played one of the lead roles in Bridges of Madison County and was nominated for an Academy Award. That came out in 1995.

The Manchurian Candidate was another good one and she was nominated for an Academy Award for her roles in The Devil Wears Prada and The Post.

Streep plays a bitchy fashion magazine editor in chief in The Devil Wears Prada and co-stars with Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt. 

I just watched The Post again on TV. As a sports journalist by trade, there isn't a movie about reporting and newspapers that I don't like.

The Post is about a cover up that spanned four U.S. Presidents that pushed the country's first female newspaper publisher and a hard-driving editor to join an unprecedented battle between the press and the government. Streep plays publisher Kay Graham and Tom Hanks is editor Ben Bradlee.

Streep's Academy Awards came for Best Actress in Sophie's Choice (1982) and The Iron Lady (2011) and Best Supporting Actress in Kramer vs. Kramer in 1980.

Honorable Mention

Halle Berry

Jodie Foster

Charlize Theron

Scarlett Johansson

Angelina Jolie