Elizabeth Taylor
Widely believed to be one of Elizabeth Taylor's greatest roles, her performance as Maggie Pollitt won her the Academy Award in 1959 for Best Actress in a Leading Role. She was also awarded best actress honors in the Laurel awards and was nominated for a BAFTA in the same category. Taylor captured the desperate strength of Maggie, the devoted wife of a former sportscaster who is not good at sharing his emotions. She is also believable desperate in her portrayal of Maggie's longing to have a child, playing her character as walking the fine line between endearing victim and emotional manipulator. Although her roles in both "National Velvet" and "Cleopatra" are more universally known, this is actually Taylor's best performance; tragically as she grew older she became more infamous for her frequent marriages and divorces, and her unlikely friendship with Michael Jackson, than for her brilliant portrayal of Maggie Pollitt.
Paul Newman
Paul Newman is the embodiment of what the writer of the must have envisaged during the creation of Brick Pollitt, bringing the character to life with gritty emotional indifference to a wife he is not only out of love with but desperate to escape from. Newman won the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and was nominated for Best Leading Actor in a Foreign Film by the British Academy. Newman's Brick Pollitt is a gruff and alcoholic man who has lost his identity and direction now that he is no longer a sportscaster. One of the tragedies of the performances of both Taylor and Newman is that together they are both an incredibly beautiful visual couple and their emotional disconnection seems even more tragic because they appear outwardly to have so much to be happy about.
Newman was the second choice to play this role; the first choice, Montgomery Clift, turned down the role but critics widely agreed that Newman was the best choice for the role and not the poor man's Clift.
Burl Ives
It has been said that Burl Ives gave one of the greatest portrayal of a literary character in film history yet he was not even recognized with a nomination by the Academy. The relationship that Ives creates between the father and son characters in the film is extremely touching and prompted one newspaper critic to express the wish that the Academy would award Oscars to the best ensemble cast.
Jack Carson
Carson is inspired as the grasping. Either trying to become the sole heir to Big Daddy's fortunes. He stated that the role was not particularly challenging because people will laugh at others' misfortunes but only because they have been through the same things before themselves. Carson was nicknamed "King of the Double Take" and far better known for comedy than dramatic performance.
