So how would you rank the performances?

1. Ellen Burstyn
2. Ben Johnson
3. Cloris Leachman
4. Jeff Bridges
5. Eileen Brennan
6. Timothy Bottoms
7. Clu Gulager
8. Sam Bottoms
9. Randy Quaid
10. Cybill Shepherd

1. Burstyn
2. Johnson
3. Leachman
4. Bridges
5. Brennan

'Burstyn vs Leachman has always been my toughest call on the subject - though I seem to have settled for the former's slightly less overt performance in recent viewings'
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Leachman had to be overt in her scenes (or last scene), or the narrative would weaken. Being understated is not always better.

Timothy Bottoms gives my favorite performance, too. It's a shame he didn't get a nomination.

After that, I would say Cloris and Ben are a tie, then Ellen, then Eileen.

I have always found Cybill Shepherd extremely boring. Though this is probably her best performance.

1 Leachman and I watched it for about the 10th time last evening and IMO, it is still the number one supporting performance by an actress that I have ever seen.
2 Burstyn
3 Johnson
4 T. Bottoms
5 Bridges
6 S. Bottoms
7 Brennan
8 Quaid
9 Gulager
10 Shepard She is the reason the picture gets a 9/10 rating from me and not a flat out 10/10.


"I am not now, nor have I ever been a Republican." - Artist Jerry Cornelia

Sometimes the least traditionally "skilled" actor just happens to be at the right place at the right time and ends up giving the standout performance. Cybill Shepherd is the #1 reason most people, both men and women, return to this film and it is because of far more than her looks. Having grown up in Tennessee, she was, along with Oklahoman Ben Johnson, the only true Southerner in the main cast and a former "Miss Teenage Tennessee" and successful fashion model. Whether she was "just playing herself" or not, her performance is iconic -- one of the most nuanced and touching explorations of "young American woman-hood," with all its wiles and tricks and humors and lusts for freedom in constant conflict with deeply instilled fears of non-conformity and "sin" and "ending up either lonely or even worse, in miserable and phony alliance like their parents," as it really was to a significant extent in the 1950s and up-to and including the early 1960s, experiments pointing the way to large-scale changes to come, some for the better and, unfortunately, even more for the worse.

Therefore, another one of "The Last Picture Show's" many wonderful and endearing qualities is the fact that it is a snapshot in time of a uniquely American brand of innocence lost and maturity gained at far too high a cost (all real costs being spiritual in the end), not just of the film's narrative period of the early 1950s, but of the time the film was actually made, the early 1970s. Being viewed today, almost 50 years after its original release, it triggers nostalgia for both the early 1970s and the 1950s simultaneously, giving it another transcendent and mythic element that synergizes with the rest of the film's many virtues to such an extent that any minor flaws become comparatively that much more insignificant.

All of these actors, young and old, had dealt with these important issues during their lifetimes, the conflict of tradition and trailblazing change and transcendence, always a part of the human condition, but magnified and accelerated by the variables specific to the American experience, and this is why the performances are so true-to-life and realistic.

1) Cybill Shepherd
2) Timothy Bottoms
3) Jeff Bridges
4) Cloris Leachman
5) Ben Johnson
6) Ellen Burstyn
7) Eileen Brennan
8) Randy Quaid
9) Sharon Ullric
10) Clu Gulager
11) Gary Brockette
12) Loyd Catlett
13) Jessie Lee Fulton
14) John Hillerman
15) Sam Bottoms