Sigourney Weaver

Alien arrived in 1979 and did something the industry was not really prepared for: it put a woman at the centre of a horror-science fiction film and let her be the one who survives on competence rather than luck. Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley became one of the defining screen characters of the era, and Weaver became one of the major female stars of the eighties and nineties on the strength of it.

The sequel is where the Academy had to pay attention. James Cameron's Aliens in 1986 earned her a Best Actress nomination at the ceremony held in 1987 - a nomination for an action-horror performance, which was close to unheard of and remains rare. It was a signal that the category could stretch further than the industry had assumed.

Then came 1989, and the record that still stands out on her page. At that year's ceremony she was nominated twice: Best Actress for playing the primatologist Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist, and Best Supporting Actress for the corporate operator Katharine Parker in Working Girl. It was the first time any performer had been nominated in both the lead and supporting categories at the same ceremony. She won the Golden Globe for both.

The two roles could not be less alike - one a woman who gave her life to animals in Rwanda, the other a woman who would sell anyone out for a promotion - and she played them in the same twelve months. That range, more than any single film, is what the peak years actually consisted of.