| Description | Actress, Movie |
| The daughter of a crooked water department executive who has an affair with the private detective investigating her husband's murder. | |
| A musical theatre dancer who, along with her daughter, is forced to share her apartment with a cocky actor when her boyfriend leaves her. | |
| A free-wheeling singer who works in a decadent German nightclub during the rise of Nazism. | |
| A Radcliffe student who falls in love with a Harvard student, then gets sick and dies. | |
| A ridiculed teenager who gets revenge on her fanatic mother and cruel classmates with her telekinetic powers. | |
| A minimum-wage cotton mill worker who inspires her co-workers to unionize after she meets a charismatic union organizer. | |
| A divorcee who reluctantly falls in love with the married man with whom she is having an affair. | |
| The final tsarina of Russia who has a strong relationship with the notorious Rasputin. | |
| An urban housewife who discovers who she is when her husband reveals his love for a younger woman. | |
| The daughter of a bartender in a small Irish village who cheats on her husband with a British officer, enraging her neighbors. | |
| A Jewish immigrant to New York who has a difficult time assimilating to American culture. | |
| A ballet dancer who takes her friend's daughter under her wing, despite the objections of her friend, a former dancer. | |
| A concert pianist who tries to repair her relationships with her two grown daughters, one of whom is severely disabled. | |
| A drug-addicted madam who runs a successful Western brothel with a charismatic drifter. | |
| The mother of a seemingly deaf, dumb, and blind pinball great who is frustrated with her son's condition. | |
| A woman who overcomes a life of poverty and prostitution to become one of the most successful jazz singers of all time. | |
| A reporter who investigates a near-disaster at a nuclear power plant. | |
| A fiercely liberal woman who marries a politically apathethic writer and squabbles with him as McCarthyism grows. | |
| A housewife whose bizarre behavior leads her confused husband to commit her to a mental institution. | |
| A lousy lounge singer who has an eventful relationship with a neurotic comedian. | |
| A Swedish immigrant to America who struggles to keep her family together in their new home. | |
| A meek pet store employee who falls in love with a boxer, a friend of her brother. | |
| A strong-willed British woman in the early 20th Century who enters into a destructive relationship with an industrialist. | |
| A mediocre singer who works as a waitress, has a young son, and has several unsuccessful relationships. | |
| An aging woman with three grown daughters who suffers from depression when her ex-husband gets engaged to another woman. | |