There was something achingly vulnerable, young and fragile about her at that moment.

The performance strives for a tone that might be described as achingly vulnerable, but it's the ache viewers are apt to experience most acutely.

Pols went on to say "Williams locates a central truth, the contradictory allure of this utterly impossible woman - mercurial, vain, foolish, but also intelligent in some very primal way and achingly vulnerable."

Her face can go instantly from contorted belligerence to an achingly vulnerable openness that makes her final transformation inevitable.

And who can forget that episode about the achingly vulnerable hooker who falls in love with Rico Tubbs, ties him to a bed between stabbings and then shoots herself in the head?

He has sung achingly vulnerable songs alone with his acoustic guitar, as he did on his recent European tour, where he performed all the songs from "Greendale" and told its story.

Louisa remains achingly vulnerable, a cold fish who longs to be a warm mammal.

She loved all that was wicked and carefree and unrepentant about him and all that was secretly kind and compassionate and achingly vulnerable.

"I want to go into oblivion," she confesses in a hushed, little-girl voice that is simultaneously deadened by disappointment, achingly vulnerable and bristling with passive-aggressive anger.

Bare heads and chests make these captive tree-men seem achingly vulnerable.