Dame Helen won the Academy Award for best actress for her role in The Queen in 2007.

BBC: Dame Helen Mirren gets European film award

But she missed out on the Academy Award for best actress that year to Shakespeare In Love star Gwyneth Paltrow.

BBC: Cate Blanchett in I'm Not There

The most celebrated recent example was "The Blind Side, " which won Sandra Bullock an Academy Award for best actress, and was about wealthy white people helping a gifted, oversize black athlete.

WSJ: Undefeated | Thin Ice | On the Ice | Real School Football (Almost) | Film Review by John Anderson

Despite the fact this was the first feature film by filmmaker Benh Zeitlin and starred unknown actors in all its roles, the film has gone to receive over 35 awards for both the director, the screenwriter Lucy Alibar, and most importantly, landing its leading lady the distinction of being the youngest nominee ever for an Oscar Academy Award for best actress.

FORBES: "Beasts of the Southern Wild": What Every Entrepreneur Should Learn From It.

Streep, who has been nominated for a Best Actress award at this year's Academy Awards for her role, stars as fiercely caustic nun, Sister Aloysius, the iron-gloved principal of a religious school in a working class New York neighborhood in the 1960s.

CNN: Streep leaves no 'Doubt' with 'tooth and nail' acting

When Hathaway won the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, or BAFTA, award this year for best supporting actress for her role as Fantine in "Les Miserables, " her acceptance speech did not go over well.

CNN: Why you love to hate Anne Hathaway

Witherspoon won a shelf full of awards for her performance as June Carter Cash in "Walk the Line, " including a best actress Academy Award.

CNN: Reese Witherspoon arrested; husband booked on DUI