Judy Davis (1982). In 1984, she was cast as Adela Quested in David Lean's final film "A Passage to India", an adaptation of E. M. Forster's novel, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. The film became a critics' favourite, opening to tremendous praise worldwide and "Variety" praised Davis for having "the rare gift of being able to look very plain (as the role calls for) at one moment and uncommonly beautiful at another. Likewise, "The Washington Post" wrote, "With makeup the color of smudged ivory, her pallor enhanced by the off-white linens she wears, Davis is
Judy Davis George Sand in "Impromptu", a romantic period drama with Hugh Grant as her consumptive lover, Frédéric Chopin. Davis was especially lauded for her performance as Sand, and Hal Hinson of "The Washington Post" wrote, "Judy Davis makes her entrances as if she were straddling a cyclone. She doesn't just walk in, she blows in on a torrent of extravagant self-assurance and wild temperament. Sand, who's the locus of this blissfully high-spirited romp about the circle of writers and musicians in 1830s Paris, never does anything halfway; her life is an experiment in full-throttle, passionate immersion, and that's why Davis is