Peter Travers Discusses His Favorite for the Best Actress Oscar
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Sunday, March 26 is Oscar night in Hollywood. And in our countdown to awards night, we are taking a closer look at some of the nominees. Peter Travers is the film critic and senior editor of "Rolling Stone" magazine. He joins us from New York this morning. Hi, Peter.</s>PETER TRAVERS, FILM CRITIC, "ROLLING STONE" MAGAZINE: Hi, how are you doing?</s>PHILLIPS: All right. We're going to get right down to it. Here we go, the nominations for best performance by an actress in a leading role: Annette Bening, "American Beauty"; Janet McTeer, "Tumbleweeds"; Julianne Moore, "The End of the Affairs"; Meryl Streep, "Music of the Heart"; and Hilary Swank, "Boys Don't Cry." What are your favorites?</s>TRAVERS: Well, you know, this is the year where Meryl Streep got her 12th nomination, which is the record tied with Catherine Hepburn, so everybody is really excited about that, except me. Because I think this is almost her 112th nomination and it is time to just let a few years go by. So my favorite is Hilary Swank in "Boys Don't Cry." This is a 25-year-old actress who, kind of, nobody heard of and then suddenly in this performance where she is playing a girl who wants to live as a boy, she has made everybody pay attention.</s>PHILLIPS: All right, now this is your favorite, and we pulled a clip. So let's take a look at her performance.</s>TRAVERS: OK. (</s>BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "BOYS DON'T CRY") UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Cow, knows all about cows. Dad taught it to me.</s>HILARY SWANK, ACTRESS: You're not going to sing it for me are you?</s>UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: No. I can't sing to save my life.</s>PHILLIPS: Peter, let's talk some more about her performance. What do you think was so good?</s>TRAVERS: I think, right away, there's the stunt aspect of it. This is a girl playing a boy, and that's the hardest thing in the world to do without making it look phony. She didn't make it look phony for a second. We saw what was a woman about her, and we saw what was inside of her that was also a man. A really difficult thing to do.</s>PHILLIPS: Julianne Moore, an up and comer, what do you think about her? Talk about her a little bit?</s>TRAVERS: I think Julianne Moore is one of the best actresses around. But "The End of the Affair" is not the movie. What you have here is I think one of the first steps and maybe two or three years down the line we are going to see her really make it.</s>PHILLIPS: All right, well, we look forward to having you again after this is all over and talking about the result. Peter Travers, film critic and senior editor at "Rolling Stone" magazine, thanks so much.</s>TRAVERS: Thank you.