Rachel Weisz wins best actress prize for Streetcar

The English film actress Rachel Weisz, who confounded critics with her performance as Blanche Dubois in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire when it opened in London last July, was named the West End's best actress of the year at last night's Laurence Olivier Awards.

The Daily Telegraph theatre critic Charles Spencer was one of those who thought she would fail when he attended the first night of the Donmar Warehouse production last summer.

"She has had relatively little stage experience and surely, I reasoned, she was too young, and too beautiful, to play the now fading, hard-drinking and wildly promiscuous Southern belle on the edge of complete breakdown," Spencer wrote.

But he and other critics were won over both by a magnificent performance and by the beauty of an actress who earlier this year was named 'the woman most men want to marry'.

Weisz, who beat Gillian Anderson, Imelda Staunton and Juliet Stevenson to yesterday's prize, was not the only actress in Streetcar to win an award: her co-star, Ruth Wilson, won best supporting actress for her performance as Stella. But the production was beaten by another Tennessee Williams play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, for best revival of the year.

Mark Rylance won best actor for his role in Jerusalem while Eddie Redmayne won best supporting actor for Red. Both plays were beaten to the best new play award by The Mountaintop, about the final hours of Martin Luther King. Its 28-year-old American writer, Katori Hall, is the first black female playwright ever to win the Olivier.

LAURENCE OLIVIER AWARDS 2010 - KEY WINNERS:

Best actress - Rachel Weisz (A Streetcar Named Desire)
Best actor - Mark Rylance (Jerusalem)
Best actress in a supporting role - Ruth Wilson (A Streetcar Named Desire)
Best actress in a supporting role - Eddie Redmayne (Red)
Best new play - The Mountaintop (by Katori Hall)
Best new comedy - The Priory (by Michael Wynne)
Best musical revival - Hello Dolly!
Best new musical - Spring Awakening
Best actress (musical or entertainment) - Samantha Spiro (Hello Dolly!)
Best actor (musical or entertainment) - Aneurin Barnard (Spring Awakening)
Best revival - Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (directed by Debbie Allen)
Best new opera - Tristan und Isolde (Royal Opera) ·