Before Demi: every lead actress who has ever been nominated for a horror film

Despite being one of the most popular genres with movie lovers, horror films have long struggled to make headway with the Academy. A visceral genre that ignites the senses, its best offerings hold up a mirror to the social order, yet scary movies are still largely overlooked in favour of the more palatable dramas and biopics which remain the ceremony’s bread and butter. 

Almost a century since the inception of the Oscars only six performers in any category have ever stepped on stage to be lauded for a performance in horror. Even so, the leading actress category has proved to be a rare battleground for the genre’s awards representation. With Demi Moore making history as the 10th leading actress to be Oscar-nominated for a horror film (and only the second this century), we take a look at the rollcall of female actors who have so far been an exception to the rule.

Director: Mervyn LeRoy

Nancy Kelly reprised her Tony-winning role of Christine Penmark for the film adaptation of The Bad Seed, becoming the first leading actress nominated for an Academy Award in the genre. She plays a doting mother who slowly comes to realise that her angel of a pre-teen daughter, Rhoda, is responsible for a series of cold-blooded murders. The film is an obvious transfer from stage to screen with Kelly often playing to the balcony, but as suspicion gives way to disbelief, fear and finally hysteria, the story is able to catch up with her performance. Alongside nominations for Kelly’s two supporting co-stars, The Bad Seed is a fine Oscar first for women in horror.

Director: Robert Aldrich

At one time the Academy’s most-nominated actor, Bette Davis’s 10th and final nod came thanks to ‘hagsploitation’ classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Davis plays the eponymous former-child star, whose resentment of her talented paraplegic sister Blanche (Joan Crawford) leads to suffering and abuse. A long-desired collaboration, the two stars’ famous rivalry was pivotal to the film’s success and helped revitalise both their careers. While Crawford’s more subtle performance was overlooked by Oscar, Davis duly earned her credit and arrived for the 35th Academy Awards the favourite. Instead, she watched as Crawford collected the statuette on behalf of winner Anne Bancroft (for The Miracle Worker) – cementing their feud in the annals of pop culture history.

Director: Terence Young

Audrey Hepburn received her fifth and final competitive Oscar nomination for the taut, tense thriller Wait Until Dark as a recently blind woman, thrust into a game of cat and mouse with a gang of thugs desperate to retrieve a doll stuffed with heroin from her basement home. Hepburn excels as the seemingly helpless Susy, summoning both sympathy and stress in spades with her poignant performance before the film barrels toward a nerve shredding climax. The anxiety she summons for the film’s final confrontation is some of her greatest work in a filmography best known for lighter fare, and stands as a worthy capper on Hepburn’s illustrious Oscar career.

Director: William Friedkin

Among its 10 nominations, The Exorcist became the first horror to be nominated for best picture, with Ellen Burstyn also up for leading actress. She plays actor and mother Chris MacNeil, who is forced to seek the assistance of the church when her young daughter is seemingly possessed by a violent demonic entity. Burstyn’s heartrending performance is comparatively restrained against the chaos of Regan’s possession, affording the film a much-needed dose of realism. Her desperation propels the film towards its epic climax, with the stakes laid bare from the start thanks to early scenes expertly depicting the tenderness of Chris and Regan’s relationship.

Director: Brian De Palma

Sissy Spacek’s sublime turn as Carrie is the heart of horror’s most affecting and disturbing coming-of-age story. Bullied by the girls at school and abused at home by her religious fanatic mother, teenager Carrie White develops telekinetic powers which unleash devastation after a humiliating prom night prank. Spacek found inspiration for Carrie’s unique physicality through classic religious imagery, expressing the character’s extreme anguish, grief and vulnerability with contorted poses and exaggerated movement that make the stillness of her vengeful finale all the more frightening. Summoning tears and terror in equal measure, Spacek’s Oscar-nominated portrayal of a tormented adolescence is one of the saddest and most memorable performances in the genre.

Director: James Cameron

James Cameron’s commitment to the character of Ellen Ripley is what finally convinced star Sigourney Weaver to reprise the role, seven years after Alien (1979). The sequel reunites us with a traumatised Ripley, fresh from 57 years of stasis and on her way back to the moon where she first encountered the xenomorph – her warnings of the creature unheeded. Ripley finds new purpose in her guardianship of the orphan Newt, with the emotional strength and complete resolve of Weaver’s Oscar-nominated performance transforming one of horror’s greatest Final Girls into one of cinema’s most relatable action heroes – and with all the nuance often missing from such archetypes.

Director: Rob Reiner

Kathy Bates plays Annie Wilkes in Misery, the “number one fan” of romance author Paul Sheldon (James Caan) whose obsession turns deadly when she imprisons her bedridden idol and forces him to rewrite the final novel in her favourite series. Bates is chilling as the disturbed bookworm, turning on a dime from pure devotion to untethered rage as the competing sides of her volatile personality leave the viewer to wonder which Annie we will see in every scene of the film. Her intense performance was the first on this list to be justly rewarded by the Academy with the Oscar for leading actress, beginning a streak that odds say looks set to continue into 2025.

Director: Jonathan Demme

Jodie Foster won her second Oscar in four years for her turn as Clarice Starling, a trainee FBI agent sent to learn from detained psychopath Hannibal Lector during the investigation of a disturbing serial killer. The Silence of the Lambs is the most recent of only three films to have won the so-called ‘Big Five’ Oscars to date, and the only horror to ever win best picture. While others doubted the project Foster recognised the revolutionary power of Starling and prominently campaigned for the role. Her performance is undeniable, marrying quiet vulnerability with dogged determination; it established a new wave of strong female protagonists on screen. In the 34 years since its release, The Silence of the Lambs has lost none of its power. 

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Natalie Portman is exquisite in her Oscar-winning performance as Nina, an ambitious but unassuming ballet dancer who lands the starring dual-role of white swan Odette and black swan Odile. Striving to attain perfection while longing for the freedom to be imperfect, in attempting to embody the part Nina uncorks a darkness within that slowly blurs the lines of her reality. For this unrelenting depiction of obsession, Portman trained in ballet for more than a year to prepare for the role which probes both the mental and physical traumas that occur in the pursuit of unattainable excellence. Expertly towing the line between flawless composure and abject turmoil, Black Swan confirmed Portman as one of her generation’s greatest talents.

Director: Coralie Fargeat

Fresh from wins at the Golden Globes, Critics’ Choice and Screen Actors Guild awards, Demi Moore is poised to possibly make history as the fourth horror performance to take the Oscar for leading actress. In body horror The Substance she plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a declining actor who takes a strange black-market drug that promises to create a younger version of herself. In real life Moore embodies what it means to be a Hollywood star, and her superbly meta casting brings a brazen authenticity to the film as Elisabeth wrestles with all of the anxieties that many celebrities must surely face themselves. It’s a bold and brilliant performance that has justly revitalised her career. On Sunday, we’ll find out whether it has secured her an Oscar in the process.