Actor

An actor (or actress for female) is one who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre, and/or in modern mediums such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is ὑποκριτής (hypokrites), literally "one who interprets". The actor's interpretation of their role pertains to the role played, whether based on a real person or fictional character. Interpretation occurs even when the actor is "playing themselves", as in some forms of experimental performance art, or, more commonly; to act, is to create, a character in performance.

Formerly, in some societies, only men could become actors, and women's roles were generally played by men or boys. In modern times, women occasionally played the roles of prepubescent boys.

Terminology

After 1660 in England, when women first started to appear on stage, the terms actor or actress were initially used interchangeably for female performers, but later, influenced by the French actrice, actress became the commonly used term for women in theatre and film. The etymology is a simple derivation from actor with ess added. Within the profession, the re-adoption of the neutral term dates to the 1950–1960s, the post-war period when the contributions of women to cultural life in general were being reviewed.Actress remains the common term used in major acting awards given to female recipients.

Jennifer Lawrence

Jennifer Shrader Lawrence (born August 15, 1990) is an American actress. Lawrence began her career in television, playing her first major role as a lead cast member on the TBS sitcom The Bill Engvall Show (2007–09). After transitioning into film, she gave her breakout performance in the independent drama Winter's Bone (2010). Her first major commercial success was playing Mystique in the fourth installment of the superhero franchise X-Men (2011–16).

Lawrence gained international fame for playing Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games film series (2012–15), which established her as the highest-grossing action heroine at that point. As a dramatic actress, she has collaborated with director David O. Russell on multiple films. Her starring role in Russell's romantic comedy Silver Linings Playbook (2012) earned her the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, making her the second-youngest Best Actress Oscar winner ever. Lawrence also received Golden Globe Awards for her performances in Russell's comedy-dramas American Hustle (2013) and Joy (2015).

Kate Winslet

Kate Elizabeth Winslet, CBE (born 5 October 1975), is an English actress and singer. She is the recipient of an Academy Award, an Emmy Award, four Golden Globe Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Grammy Award and three BAFTA Awards. She is the youngest person to receive six Academy Award nominations with seven nominations in total, and is one of the few actresses to win three of the four major American entertainment awards (EGOT). In addition, she has won awards from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association among others, and an Honorary César Award in 2012.

Brought up in Berkshire, Winslet studied drama from childhood, and began her career in British television in 1991. She made her film debut in Heavenly Creatures (1994), for which she received praise. She garnered her first Academy Award nomination for her role as Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility (1995) before achieving global stardom with the epic romance Titanic (1997), which was the highest-grossing film of all time at that point and earned her a second Academy Award.nomination Winslet's performances in Iris (2001), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Finding Neverland (2004), Little Children (2006), Revolutionary Road (2008), and Steve Jobs (2015) continued to draw praise from film critics and earned her another three Academy Award nominations. In 2008, the critic David Edelstein described her as "the best English-speaking film actress of her generation".