Categories One-by-One: Leading Actor

[criddic3]

Out of pure sentiment, and recognizing what a great actor he is, I hope Farrell wins. There is something with Fraser's campaign that I have found somewhat unpleasant, even manipulative. Fraser may have been close of getting a previous nomination in 1998 for Gods and Monsters but nothing else from his career strikes me as particularly deserving. Farrell, on the other hand, is undoubtedly one of my favorite actors. We will see...

Fraser was a beloved movie star, though, with several major hits including the Mummy movies, George of the Jungle, Blast from the Past and Journey to the Center of the Earth. He was also in serious movies like Gods & Monsters, The Quiet American and Crash, which won Best Picture.

[HarryGoldfarb]

I'm not in the best position to comment on these races, as this year has found me with one of my worst tracks in seen nominated films. I haven't seen TBoI or The Whale yet, but having seen Elvis I can only hope someone other than Butler wins this award. It still amazes me that he is remains so strong as a contender: when I saw the movie months ago I thought that with some luck he'd get the nomination. That Butler has won the Bafta is more than discouraging.

I haven't seen Living either but Aftersun is, as of today, my favorite movie from last year and I love that Mescal got the nomination.

Out of pure sentiment, and recognizing what a great actor he is, I hope Farrell wins. There is something with Fraser's campaign that I have found somewhat unpleasant, even manipulative. Fraser may have been close of getting a previous nomination in 1998 for Gods and Monsters but nothing else from his career strikes me as particularly deserving. Farrell, on the other hand, is undoubtedly one of my favorite actors. We will see...

[dws1982]

If it's legal in your state and you have a few extra dollars, DraftKings, in my opinion, has Farrell undervalued at +1100.

[criddic3]

These debits are pretty much the main reason Colin Farrell remains alive in the race, even if, as I suggested up top, at long shot level.

This has always been a three-way race in my mind. I could easily see Farrell sneaking through if voters split heavily between Fraser and Butler. And it wouldn't be a bad choice for the reasons you state. Long-ish career, overlooked for some major roles in the past. It might be that Butler can be seen as someone who could be nominated again in the future. However, after what happened with Chadwick Boseman -- often being buzzed for Oscar but never getting nominated until he died -- might make some voters think twice about doing that again. But then again, Boseman lost posthumously to Anthony Hopkins, so that sentiment only goes so far. But I still think Brendan Fraser has the most compelling narrative in the category, notwithstanding his film's failure to get nominations in Picture or Screenplay. On the other hand, he isn't a lone nominee, as his costar Hong Chau and the makeup are up there.

[Mister Tee]

I've left this till last to comment on, and come to realize, as I sit down to write, that it may be the category I care about most -- though I'm not kidding myself my choice is any more than a long shot.

Though we all talk incessantly about the four televised awards, the Oscar winner in this category has, post-2003, always come from the BAFTA or SAG camp. This is the 6th time in that period the two bodies have diverged with their choices. Early on, SAG had the better of it -- predicting Penn over Rourke, Bridges over Firth, and McConaughey over Ejiofor (that one gets the "McConaughey wasn't nominated at BAFTA" asterisk). The last two times, though -- Affleck over Washington, Hopkins over Boseman -- BAFTA carried the day. So, there's no inherent advantage to either team. (Though, if you want to talk about the two voting bodies, BAFTA has become more AMPAS-like over that time-frame -- adding American voters, while AMPAS added internationals -- and SAG, with the AFTRA merger and the influencer influx, may have slipped further out of the orbit.)

It's easy to see the appeal of the Fraser candidacy: a metric ton of prosthetics; a weepy dramatic role for a once-thriving actor who'd fallen on hard times; considering the film's content, quite decent box-office in the pandemic era.

Just as easy to see Butler's assets: effective celebrity impersonation, aging years over the run-time. His film was a true box-office success, and Oscar voters nominated it in the big category (though not either directing or screenwriting, making it not quite a power-player.)

But each also has negatives: Fraser's film fell short of the field of 10, and, maybe even more ominously, couldn't make it into a pitifully compromised screenplay category. Butler is VERY young -- would instantly become one of the two or three youngest ever to win this prize.

I've heard people say, Eddie Redmayne and Rami Malek were young, too, and the transformation/celebrity got them past that. I'd say, they were a little less young -- Redmayne was 35 when he won, Malek 38; Butler a mere 31-- but, more importantly, each had a deeper showbiz footprint. Redmayne had already won a Tony for Red, and appeared prominently in Oscar vehicles My Week with Marilyn and Les Miz in the years preceding. Malek had already won his Emmy for Mr. Robot (and seemed, from that, to be a fairly exciting actor). Butler, I see, was in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but I don't remember anyone coming out of that asking Who was that guy who played Tex? In a certain way, you can't even call Butler turning into Elvis a transformation, since most of us had no impression of him prior.

These debits are pretty much the main reason Colin Farrell remains alive in the race, even if, as I suggested up top, at long shot level. He's had a far longer career than Butler, a far more impressive one than Fraser, and his film certainly wins the critical/AMPAS respect battle among the three vehicles in question here. He was considerably more feted in critics' prizes, especially the most prestigious. He shows up surprisingly well in the anonymous ballots (I know: Penelope Cruz -- but, rejoinder: Anthony Hopkins), and, from some reporting, buzz around Hollywood.

His only debit, really, is failing to win SAG or BAFTA. Which is a pretty big one, if you run strictly on algorithms, as most Oscar predictors do, these days. But, it might be worthwhile to remember: in the several years prior/leading up to 2003, this rule didn't apply. There was the whole Russell Crowe kerfluffle over 2000-2001, which you can argue skewed things, but the fact is, Jamie Bell/Benicio Del Toro were topped by Russell Crowe in 2000, and then Russell Crowe X 2 was trumped by Denzel Washington a year later. And the two years following need no asterisk: Daniel Day-Lewis took both prizes, but lost to Adrien Brody; Bill Murray and Johnny Depp split them in 2003, and watched as Sean Penn took the Oscar.

You can argue, these were early on, before BAFTA got fully in line...and you might be right. But there's also the fact that what we see as this vast body of predictive data only amounts to 20-odd cases: the very definition of small sample size. We have no idea if these trends are iron-clad, or simply coincidental outcome from which long-term conclusions can't be drawn.

All of which is to say, I'm probably going to predict based on short-term data -- I think Austin Butler, celebrity impersonation in a best picture nominee, fits the profile best. But I can't rule out a less-likely-by-numbers Colin Farrell coming along to surprise.

For the record: while I want both Blanchett AND Farrell to win, if you offered me assurance on just one...I believe I'd pick Farrell.

[dws1982]

dws1982 wrote
The last time a performance with no real "hook" won this category was Casey Affleck in Manchester by the Sea, and no one else in that category really had one either, except maybe Denzel Washington who directed his film, but he had also won twice, and probably almost pulled off the third win.

This is a very good point. Do you think Jeff Bridges had a "hook" in Crazy Heart?

Mainly the fact that he had been working for all those years with several nominations and no win. It wasn't the biggest one, and that hook doesn't always pay off, but no one else in that lineup really had one: two recent winners and two first time nominees (one in a movie that probably wasn't that popular; the other in one that definitely was but probably wasn't looked at as an actor's showcase).

[Sabin]

dws1982 wrote
The last time a performance with no real "hook" won this category was Casey Affleck in Manchester by the Sea, and no one else in that category really had one either, except maybe Denzel Washington who directed his film, but he had also won twice, and probably almost pulled off the third win.

This is a very good point. Do you think Jeff Bridges had a "hook" in Crazy Heart?

[dws1982]

I hope you're right about Farrell too. I fear the thing that might hurt him is a lack of a "hook" in both his performance and Best Actor campaign in general. He's a good actor giving a good performance (better than good in my opinion) in a movie that they look, but there isn't that extra thing that Best Actor winners often have. Fraser is basically nothing but hook--fat suit, come back narrative that has turned him into a giant puppy dog--hobbled a bit by the fact that maybe people don't like the movie much. (Or maybe some of us want to believe people don't like it?) Butler has all of the hook that a biopic performance has, plus he did his own singing...or at least some of it. And it's a Best Picture nominee. I really think he's got two negatives, and I don't know how big they are: the "what else can he do?" question, and the fact, which has become a bit of a joke, that he is still walking around, a couple of years after filming has finished, with that Elvis voice.

The last time a performance with no real "hook" won this category was Casey Affleck in Manchester by the Sea, and no one else in that category really had one either, except maybe Denzel Washington who directed his film, but he had also won twice, and probably almost pulled off the third win. But otherwise, there seems to usually be some hook: Will Smith - real life person, lots of people really wanted Will Smith to win an Oscar for some reason; Anthony Hopkins - playing a man with dementia was the hook here, and his movie was more popular than Boseman's; Joaquin Phoenix - never won an Oscar, huge box-office, weird physical transformation; Rami Malek - biopic, kind of a physical transformation, huge box-office (this one was no more of a hook than Cooper--writing, directing, starring in a big critical and commercial hit, or Bale--one of those insane physical transformations, but people just loved the movie as its 4/5 Oscars show); Gary Oldman - he's never won an Oscar and has only been nominated once, biopic of well-known icon; Leonardo DiCaprio - never won an Oscar, sent himself to the brink of death making the movie; Eddie Redmayne - biopic, lots of intricate physical/voice work (outweighed the hook of Keaton's comeback); McConaughey - McConnaissance, major physical transformation; Day-Lewis - biopic of the most iconic American ever, which was not just a critical hit but a box-office one too; Dujardin - less of a hook than others, but I think the silent film gimmick worked to his advantage, which gave him a different type of acting than the other guys, who were mostly just anchoring dramas, plus it being a best picture frontrunner no doubt helped; Firth - biopic, just nominated the year before, now in a Best Picture contender, and the sense that he had undervalued for all these years; Bridges - long time veteran, never won.

I feel like Butler or Fraser fit into that better than Farrell. I hope I'm wrong.

[Sabin]

Hope you're right.

[Big Magilla]

I completely agree that AMPAS is closer to BAFTA for the reasons Ed articulates, but I still think this is one category where neither the BAFTA nor the SAG winner will prevail for reasons I've already stated.

[dws1982]

When in doubt, I'm going with the actor in the Best Picture nominee. That served me well with Penn/Rourke, and helped me with the somewhat surprising Colman over Close upset. The only recent case of a performer in a non-Best Picture nominee winning a close Lead race over an actor in a Best Picture nominee is Meryl Streep over Viola Davis, which is probably the best precedent to look at if you want to find a precedent for Fraser winning, but I do think Elvis is a stronger Best Picture nominee than The Help ever was and Butler's performance hits a lot of the things that people are looking for in Best Actor (and Actress) winners lately.

[Sabin]

I think Ed makes a very good point over at Slant. I'll just paste it here:

It’s been a little over 48 hours since the Screen Actors Guild Awards unleashed, yes, chaos on the world—or, at least, on the road to Oscar. This is a good thing, because if ever AMPAS needed viewers to be on the edge of their seats ahead of an Oscar ceremony—that is, in this age of declining ratings and competition from other media—it’s now. But in case you haven’t heard: The SAGs have never had zero overlap with the BAFTA awards…until last Sunday.

To be fair, that wasn’t completely unexpected. For one, few expected Barry Keoghan and Kerry Condon to follow up their BAFTA victories for The Banshees of Inisherin with wins at the SAGs, and the tea leaves were spelling out that Michelle Yeoh would break Cate Blanchett’s winning streak. And at least in our little corner of the awards blogosphere, Brendan Fraser’s SAG victory for his performance in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale didn’t exactly come as a surprise, given the echoes that this Oscar race for best actor has to at least one prior one, but also given how much more populist SAG has become since its merger with AFTRA in 2012.

This is the part where we can bore you with details about everything from equity rules to the overlap in memberships between BAFTA, AMPAS, and SAG-AFTRA, but we’re going to keep this simple: SAG-AFTRA has approximately 130,000 active members. That’s more than 120,000 more members than AMPAS, which is enough to explain why BAFTA, which has approximately 6,500 members, has been more closely aligning with Oscar since the SAG-AFTRA merger.

When Austin Butler won the BAFTA award for his performance in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, it came as a surprise even to us, given that The Banshees of Inisherin was looking to run the tables at the awards ceremony. This was also the same group that gave prizes to the stars of two other chamber pieces and eventual Oscar winners, Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea) and Anthony Hopkins (The Father), who both would go on to lose their SAG bids, to Denzel Washington (Fences) and Chadwick Boseman (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom), respectively.

This particular Oscar race most closely recalls the nail-biting two-step between Mickey Rourke and Sean Penn throughout the 2007-2008 awards season. Rourke was the star of another Aronofsky film, The Wrestler, and he won both a Golden Globe and BAFTA trophy for his performance, while Penn would go on to win the SAG award for his turn in Milk.

Then, we correctly predicted that Penn would go on win the Oscar, but this year we’re siding with BAFTA. Our logic is that the SAGs have grown softer since the SAG-AFTRA merger, while Oscar has grown edgier, if not necessarily in the acting categories. So, why not Fraser? Because Penn’s BAFTA loss is as easy to explain as Butler’s win, as Penn played a figure that’s mostly lodged in the American consciousness as a significant figure in the struggle for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, while Butler played a man who looms as a totemic figure on the pop-cultural imagination. When in doubt, go with the star of the biopic.

This is roughly my thinking. I just think there's too many reasons to predict Austin Butler. I can come up with a few scenarios that might explain a Fraser win. For example, sure, Chadwick Boseman lost for the non-Best Picture nominated Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (to Hopkins in the Best Picture-nominated The Father) but that win might have had more to do with voters not really loving his film or his performance. I do think that Brendan Fraser's performance is more Oscar voter-friendly. But these people love Elvis and when voters fill out their ballot they tend to go with their heart not with their head.

[Big Magilla]

Colin Farrell not only gave the year's best performance in The Banshees of Inisherin, but he was also a standout in Thirteen Lives and The Batman as well. He's been good in so many other films over the years that it's difficult to imagine the award going to anyone other than him unless it's Brendan Fraser for his backstory more than his performance in a disappointing film.

Austin Butler can play Elvis, but what else can he do? All those other winners for playing real-life characters had track records. I'm still not seeing it despite BAFTA.

Should win: Colin Farrell
Will win: Farrell or Brendan Fraser

[anonymous1980]

I looked this up. In at least the past 20 years, the only time all four acting winners portrayed fictional characters was in the 2016 Oscars: Casey Affleck, Emma Stone, Viola Davis and Mahershala Ali. The rest of the time, there's at least one acting winner portraying a real-life character. There are only two actors this year nominated for playing a real-life character (well, four if you want to include the fictionalized versions of Spielberg's family): Austin Butler and Ana de Armas. That coupled with the fact Austin Butler is in a Best Picture nominee, makes me lean towards Austin Butler.

[Okri]

Let’s puzzle our way through best actor. The nominees….

Austin Butler – Elvis
Colin Farrell – The Banshees of Inisherin
Brendan Fraser – The Whale
Paul Mescal – Aftersun
Bill Nighy – Living

So before delving into the three we agree are the contenders (right?), let’s just give a shout out to Paul Mescal and Bill Nighy. Nighy’s had the type of career where you wouldn’t have ever wagered money on him getting a nomination (lotta stage and TV work instead of film work for stretches; didn’t have a major film breakthrough until his 50s) but when the possibility arose, he sailed to a first nomination with relative ease. It’s interesting to see these actors – actors like Jim Broadbent, Mark Rylance, Frank Langella – who inhabit our frames with comfort getting these nominations as recognition for their careers if nothing else. Paul Mescal is on the opposite end of the spectrum. I think, after Normal People, we all would have bet on this happening for him. That it happened with such a recessive performance means he’s unlikely to win, but what an extraordinary talent nonetheless.

Now, to the next three

From Tee: “But a sad fact stands out: ever since Jamie Foxx kicked off the celebrity-impersonation Oscar, 11 of 18 best actor winners have been Real People, many of them prominent/previously-known.”

I think it’s worth highlighting the above because it wasn’t always that way. The 90s only had two (Irons as von Bulow; Rush as Helfgott). The 80s had 3 or 4 (depending on how you want to define Salieri, I suppose). But something shifted profoundly in how AMPAS (and audiences) viewed acting. I also wonder if the Oscar industrial complex contributed to the change – though that’s a thought I only just had. But thinking about it, when you predict Oscars year-round, predicting nominations for actors playing real people is like a cheat code. After all, you already “know” who the actor in transforming into (and the further away they seem, the more startling the potential experience). Sorta like how predicting category fraud can beget category fraud. It’s so startling how quickly that shifted, to be honest

From Sabin: “To be honest, I never really saw Farrell in the race. His performance is so atypical of an Oscar winner. Actors rarely win for playing kind, sweet, and dumb, although they should. Beyond that, I get the sense that affection for The Banshees of Inisherin might not manifest around a vote for Farrell. It'll take the form of a writing win or maybe even Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress.”

Sabin had mentioned this after seeing the film as well (the first half more so than the second half). I have to admit that I thought that might be an issue, but when I viewed the race as between Fraser and Farrell, I thought Farrell was clearly ahead. Not only did he win their first head-to-head, he had more critics on his side and was in the more acclaimed film. I echo everyone else’s take here on The Whale, with the added note that I had previously read the play and didn’t care for it (it took me a long time to warm to Hunter). I also didn’t quite believe in the narrative about Fraser’s return either, to be honest.

But with Butler winning BAFTA that was thrown askew. Obviously, Fraser was never going to win the Golden Globe but I really thought Farrell would win BAFTA easily. But that didn’t happen and now I question everything. But I’m still going to predict Farrell. The thing with Butler is that he’s still very new and AMPAS rarely goes for young/new men in leading or supporting. I don’t think Butler would’ve been on their radar at all before this year whereas the other two contenders have longer CVs. I’m also thinking of a year like 2002. Now, I know Brody probably doesn’t happen if the other four don’t already have Oscars, but you had one film that underperformed on Oscar nomination day (About Schmidt/The Whale); one film that performed quite well but it turned out that it was strictly a nomination thing (Gangs of New York/Elvis?) and one film it turns out they liked quite a bit (The Pianist/Banshees of Inisherin). But, among other things, I think that for this to be true, the second part of Sabin’s comment (where affection for the film lands) needs to be more spread out.

So yeah, I’m going to stick with my prediction, but understanding that it’s just as much in hope as expectation.