Being a guy, Billy Crudup can't qualify as Best Actress, but he does a hell of a job playing the "most beautiful woman on the London stage." In the seventeenth century, women were banned from acting. Men played all the women's roles, and nobody did it better than Ned Kynaston (Crudup). His dying Desdemona in Shakespeare's Othello brought down the house. Just ask Margaret Hughes (Claire Danes), Ned's dresser, who yearns for the guy until she catches him going at it with the Duke of Buckingham (Ben Chaplin). But when King Charles II (Rupert Everett is a hoot and a half) rules that women can now strut onstage, Margaret is suddenly a and Ned must struggle to play men. Expertly directed by Richard Eyre (Iris) from Jeffrey Hatcher's play, the film is bawdy fun. But Crudup pierces the heart in an audition that has Ned trying to squelch his feminine side. When Ned and Margaret co-star in Othello — Crudup and Danes pair up beautifully — the gender role-playing puts spine in this period piece that is vital to the here and now.

“Is It True”

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."