She is far away the best actress in the movie.

Why we choose 'in' instead of 'of'

Hello, Paok. This is a question that tests idiomatic usage and grammatical construction in a few key splits:

1. Idiom—far away versus far and away versus far off
2. Grammatical construction—the best actress versus best actress
3. Idiom—in the movie versus of the movie

Speaking to the first point, far away is a measure of distance, so we can strike (A) and (B). Also, far off falls into the distance camp, so we can dismiss (E) for the same reason. (A ship could be far off course, for instance.)

Concerning the second point, the article the is necessary to refer to the actress who performed the best. The only time you will see best actress without an article is in the title of an award. For example, you could see, She won the Oscar for Best Actress last year.

Now, regarding the third split, and to touch on your question, either preposition, in or of, could be used to refer to someone who appeared in a film. If the sentence were rewritten, She was far and away the movie's best actress, we would probably interpret the possessive as an of—the best actress of the movie. To be clear, then, this is not a split that we can use to rule out any answer choice.

The good news is that our first and second concerns knock out all the answer choices but one, and that one is the answer choice we should select. In short:


I hope my response proves helpful to you and the community. Good luck with your studies.

- Andrew