By Dan Hust
SULLIVAN COUNTY — For the second year in a row, Sullivan County resident and rising actress Michelle Williams has been nominated for a Best Actress Oscar.
Playing the lead role in “My Life With Marilyn,” Williams has already been critically hailed and awarded multiple times for her performance as screen icon Marilyn Monroe.
She was nominated last year for her starring role in “Blue Valentine,” filmed in and around neighboring Wayne County, PA.
Williams – who was the first presenter at last Sunday’s Screen Actors Guild Awards – is probably best known for her roles in TV’s “Dawson’s Creek” and the films “Brokeback Mountain” and “Shutter Island.”
She’s slated to star as Glinda the Good Witch in next year’s 3-D “Wizard of Oz” prequel from Disney, “Oz: The Great and Powerful.”
She is not, however, Sullivan’s first contribution to the Academy Awards.
The county has hosted many Oscar-winners and nominees who honed their skills at Borscht Belt hotels in decades past, but there are several Academy-honored stars who currently call the county home:
• Mark Ruffalo – Best Supporting Actor nominee last year for “The Kids Are All Right.”
• F. Murray Abraham – Best Actor winner for 1984’s “Amadeus.”
• Debra Winger – Best Actress nominee for 1982’s “An Officer and a Gentleman,” 1983’s “Terms of Endearment” and 1994’s “Shadowlands.”
• Marcia Gay Harden – Best Actress winner for 2000’s “Pollock” and nominee for 2003’s “Mystic River.”
• Corinne Marrinan – Best Short Subject Documentary winner for her producing work on 2005’s “A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin.”
• Trish Adlesic – Best Documentary nominee last year for her producing work on “Gasland.”