What makes a great actress? Their craft, their skill, their charisma? Their concentration, their courage, their inner life? The question resurfaces with the release next month of Evening, featuring a bevy of box-office beauties, including the thrilling Vanessa Redgrave. The other actresses are her daughter, Natasha Richardson, Claire Danes, Toni Colette, Eileen Atkins – whose talent can make a grown man cry – Mamie Gummer and her mother, the redoubtable Meryl Streep, otherwise known as “the actress’s actress”. It’s quite something, having all these women in the same film.

I first saw a great actress as soon as I could toddle along to the Broadway cinema in Southampton, stretch up to the box office, hand over my four pennies and enter the vast mausoleum with its medieval murals and gum-chewing usherettes.

The lights dimmed, the glowing organ sank out of sight in silence – and, after the Twentieth Century Fox fanfare, there she was. The Little Colonel. Poor Little Rich Girl. Yes, it was Shirley Temple, singing, dancing and acting all at the same time.

By the age of 10 I had graduated to more sophisticated entertainment, such as that featured in The Fleet’s In. Not only did Dorothy Lamour sing and dance and act at the same time, she could also turn native in a sexy sarong, as in Aloma of the South Seas. And let’s not forget Betty Grable in Sweet Rosie O'Grady, Down Argentine Way and Mother Wore Tights. Don’t laugh – for years and years these ladies bowled over millions of film fans.

As did Maureen O’Sullivan, who managed to approach greatness playing opposite a gorilla – and I don’t mean Johnny Weissmuller – in Tarzan. She managed to swing her way, with a smile and an alluring mix of delicacy and gamesmanship, through a jungle of studio palm trees.

Another lovely athletic actress was Esther Williams, who could smile while loop-the-looping underwater in Million Dollar Mermaid and Jupiter’s Darling – so don’t underestimate her greatness either, nor that of Sonja Henie, the skating star – she was a triple Olympic gold medallist – of so many Hollywood sagas such as My Lucky Star and The Countess of Monte Cristo.

And what is it about Elizabeth Taylor that makes her great? Those liquid eyes the colour of irises? Her ability to communicate paradox: vulgar, vulnerable and untouchably proud all at once?

There are two impeccable actresses I’ve actually had the privilege of working with: Glenda Jackson and Vanessa Redgrave. There simply was no end to their genius. Whatever character they were playing, they absorbed it totally. Glenda oozed power and self-possession in Women in Love, woundedness and need in The Music Lovers. One would never guess that seconds before a challenging scene as a murderous queen (in Salome’s Last Dance) she would “prepare” by listening to Women’s Hour on the radio in her dressing room.

Or that Vanessa would complete a scripted nervous breakdown on screen as the schizophrenic nun in The Devils, then rush out to sell The Daily Worker at the studio gates At the sound of the clapperboard these big stars were as focused as astronauts on the way to achieving lift-off – as luminous as angels, as nuanced as smoke, as riveting as tornados. How they managed it is known only to themselves, as I was too discreet ever to pry.

I could also sing the praises of Helen Mirren (The Queen), an accomplished actress I had the pleasure of working with on Savage Messiah when she was not much more than a teenager, or Georgina Hale (Mahler), an actress of such sensitivity that she can make the hair rise on your arms.

No one can deny that Meryl Streep has given a host of memorable performances, in The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Out of Africa, Sophie’s Choice and others. Each character was delivered impeccably, with accents ranging from Danish to German to deepest Cornish. I applaud her technical proficiency. But for me the accents got in the way of the performance, pulling at my attention like a magician’s hat-trick.

Who do I like today? Hilarie Burton in Our Very Own impressed me, as did the mesmerising Claire Danes in Stardust, the sultry Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys and Age of Innocence, the sympathetic Toni Colette in Japanese Story and Muriel’s Wedding, the deadpan Frances McDormand in Fargo and Almost Famous, the yummy Sandra Bullock in Infamous and Crash, the complex Jane Fonda in Klute, the sophisticated Nicole Kidman in The Others, the chameleon Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth I or Coffee and Cigarettes, the can-do Kate Winslet in Holy Smoke!, the shining Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs, the versatile Julianne Moore in Boogie Nights and Children of Men.

What is it they have? What is it they do? They have the inimitable grace to make private moments public. To make emotional truths move in and set up house. To make you care, or at least understand.

Sometimes it’s not what the great actress does but what she doesn’t do. Greta Garbo in Queen Christina, in that two-minute conclusion where she does nothing but stare out to sea while we go through the emotions for her. Marilyn Monroe in The Misfits, not so much creating a character as being transparently a deer caught in the headlights. Katharine Hepburn in anything, in spite of Dorothy Parker’s assessment that “she ran the gamut of emotions from A to B”. Faye Dunaway, mysterious and enigmatic in Bonnie and Clyde and Chinatown.

But one monstre sacré of the great art I’d love to have seen would be Sarah Bernhardt in her film of Hamlet. She was a real trouper who took her final bow, aged 77, on one leg. Now that's what I call acting.

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