...as acting ladies, I would like to nominate my high school valedictorian, who insisted "But Home Economics IS just as hard as Physics and Chemistry".

To be more serious (it's an effort), my favorites would be Sally Fields in "Sybil", though I can't remember the name of her role in it, and Amy Irving in the 1979 sleeper "Voices". She was nominated for a couple of Golden Globe awards and also for an Academy Award for supporting actress in Yentl, but none of those came close to matching her work in "Voices". I guess she didn't win anything for that because she was still fairly new in the business and the movie didn't draw big crowds.