For Vanity Fair’s 2016 Hollywood Portfolio, the legendary photographer captured 13 of the cinema’s finest actresses for the portraits you see here. Measured by years, awards, or performances, they’re dazzling to behold.

18 FILMS, INCLUDING JOY AND THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY—PART 2 (2015); ONE ACADEMY AWARD, ONE BAFTA.
With almost more life force than ought to be allowed, Jennifer Lawrence has seized the forefront as a dragonslayer with a goofy streak, a female Lancelot with a playful glint, capable of getting up to no good. It is this champagne tickle beneath her oval surface that has enabled her to scale from the rawboned resilience of Winter’s Bone—the film that first put her in the firmament—to the rallying defiance of the Hunger Games series and mutant agonistes of the X-Men franchise without becoming an ennobled drag. Every emotion shines through her fresh and untinted. The creative threesome with writer-director David O. Russell and the never demure Bradley Cooper—Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle (her tutorial on the dangers of the “science oven” belongs to the ages), and Joy, where she mops up her fourth Oscar nomination at the infernally young age of 25—gave her room to carom and showcased the irrepressible side of her that makes her every red-carpet appearance and awards ceremony a potential Happening, especially if Amy Schumer is in on the caper.

Gallery Links:
– Photoshoots From 2016 > Shoot #005 ~ Vanity Fair