Brendan Gleeson
Age: 67
Film: The Banshees of Inisherin
Role: Colm, Pádraic’s friend. Well. Not anymore.
Nomination History:
This is Gleeson’s first nomination.
Why He Should Win
This is Gleeson’s first nomination?! Brendan Gleeson has never been nominated for an Oscar? Seriously? While writing about the 2023 acting nominations, I’ve noticed something that shocks me. Of the twenty acting nominees, sixteen are being nominated for the first time, including all five nominees for Best Actor!
Brendan Gleeson is such a heavy-hitting actor. He takes such challenging roles. (He’s great in Calvary, and that’s so intense and serious.) His performances earn such accolades. (Critics loved In Bruges!) How has the Academy never nominated him? (Did they not even see Paddington 2?)
In all seriousness, though I couldn’t recall Gleeson ever winning an Oscar, when I started compiling his nomination history, I assumed I’d be typing up all sorts of Gleeson roles that had slipped my mind. (I didn’t even realize he played Hamish in Braveheart until I re-watched the film with my daughter last year!)
I was genuinely shocked this is his first nomination.
Martin McDonagh clearly knows how to write the perfect material for him. His part in Banshees is so well written, and not just anyone could make a character like that so believable and vibrant. I know the conflict between Colm and Pádraic is supposed to be a metaphor for the Irish Civil War, but Gleeson makes the character work on a literal, human level as well. (I mean, honestly, if the film were only a two-hour metaphor, it would be bad drama. It’s interesting to watch because it’s also a story about people.)
This character spoke to me, bothered me. In some ways, I can identify with Colm. He wants to work on his music. I would imagine that takes time. Writing certainly does. When I write fiction, I detach from everything, working in hyper-focused bursts. When I do that, I write fairly quickly (two full drafts of a novel in three months). If I don’t do that, sometimes I can’t write at all. And writing is how I process my thoughts and feelings. If others are allowed to work, why is it selfish for me to work? (No one says it is but me.) I identify with Colm’s drive to produce something of quality before he dies. But then you know, Colm is perfectly willing to hang out at the pub with other people, just not with Pádraic. And if Pádaic speaks to him, Colm threatens to cut off his own fingers (which will make hard to play the fiddle).
Colm’s strange game of “I’m going to make you hate me until I love you again” clearly shows that 1) he does care about Pádraic 2) he’s having a mental health crisis. Something is wrong with Colm. It may be depression. It may be depression caused by an age-related neurological problem. It may be a lot of stuff, but Colm needs help. (It’s funny to imagine this as a children’s book. “Colm needed help. He cut off his fingers and threw them at his friend Pádraic’s door. So Pádraic came and burned his house down. The end.”)
I like the scene when Siobhán returns his first finger. As Colm explains how he felt after chopping it off, Gleeson makes him almost giddy. His energy doesn’t match the gravity of what he’s done or the feelings he’s describing about his relationship with Pádraic. Gleeson shows us the adrenaline rush after the physical shock, and we get the idea this may have jolted him into a more normal state of consciousness. We can also see here how Pádraic and Colm spent years as friends. There’s another side to Colm.
I also love the scenes in the confessional. In just these two brief scenes, Gleeson gives us such insight into the character. We see his sense of humor, his existential crisis, his longing for faith, his tender heart, his despair, his inability to evaluate his self-mutilation in a healthy way. Gleeson lets us peek right into the heart of a complex person just by sitting, talking, moving his eyes. These are brief scenes, but he manages to telegraph almost the whole of Colm to us here. (They also answered my most pressing questions on a first watch. Is he in love with him? Is he dying? (Is he in love with him and dying?)) From a narrative standpoint, the confessional is convenient. If Pádraic asked, “Are you in love with me?” we’d never be sure we’re getting a straight answer, but there’s no reason to lie in the confessional. It’s just Colm and the priest in there. Gleeson takes full advantage of confessional to show us even more (with his face) than his dialogue reveals. If it weren’t for the confessional scenes, Colm would be so much harder to figure out. As it is, he’s pretty enigmatic.
Not just anyone could make it look so effortless to play someone depressed in a dark, absurd comedy with plot elements that are grotesque and alarming. The wrong actor would destroy this movie making us laugh at the wrong parts. Gleeson manages to tease all the humor out of the situation, while still showing us Colm’s suffering and the ambivalence he feels about bringing suffering to Pádraic.
Why He Might Not Win
Had Gleeson won before, I would rule him out completely with no hesitation. In my heart, this Oscar belongs to Ke Huy Quan.
But he’s never won before. He’s never even been nominated before. And this is a fantastic performance. Plus, it’s difficult material. (Of course, on the flip side, McDonagh sort of wrote it with Gleeson in mind. At the very least, he wanted to reunite Gleeson and Farrell, and that idea was playing around in the back of his head as he wrote.)
I don’t see how Ke Huy Quan can’t win. I’ll be so sad for him if he doesn’t win. But surely as they cast their votes, Academy members will sigh, “Brendan Gleeson gives such a good performance in The Banshees of Inisherin. Alas!”
Of course, full disclosure: I’m a writer who loves Martin McDonagh’s work (his films. I’ve never had the opportunity to see his plays). I always like his stuff. I can’t resist dark, tragic comedy with a slightly off-kilter plot and problematic characters. So maybe not everybody likes this as much as I do (except I think they do. It seems to be quite well received).
If somehow Ke Huy Quan doesn’t win, surely Brendan Gleeson will.
Brian Tyree Henry
Age: 40
Film: Causeway
Role: James, the New Orleans mechanic who makes a difference in the life of a wounded soldier by opening up about his own trauma, offering her friendship, and showing her a way forward in life.
Nomination History:
This is Henry’s first nomination.
Why He Should Win
I just watched Causeway on Apple TV. Henry’s performance is by far the best part. He is fantastic in roles that allow him to sit and slowly tell a story.
In Causeway, Jennifer Lawrence plays Lynsey, a soldier injured in Afghanistan when an ied blast leads to a harrowing situation that leaves her with a traumatic brain injury and PTSD. The film is about recovery. First we see Lynsey with a trained nurse in a live-in rehab facility, slowly recovering from her physical injury, relearning simple tasks—normal movement, driving—that her body has forgotten how to perform because of her brain damage. This is a gradual process. It takes time, patience, and willingness to accept small setbacks and celebrate tiny victories. When she’s ready to leave (physically), she’s still struggling with PTSD and not only because of the horrific event that caused her injury. The idea of moving back into her family home in New Orleans triggers her, too. She was unhappy there. She wanted to escape. That’s what led her to join the Army in the first place.
We learn all this in the first few minutes of the film. Then Lynsey goes home and happens to meet James (Brian Tyree Henry) the mechanic who is fixing her truck.
By the time Henry shows up, we’ve already seen the slow, frustrating process of healing from the physical injury. The rest of the movie shows us the equally slow, frustrating process of healing from the PTSD. (Admittedly, in some ways PTSD is a physical injury, too, because traumatic situations can rewire the brain.) A nurse has helped Lysney rehab to relearn physical tasks. Now James (a car mechanic and fellow human being) helps Lynsey readjust psychologically after traumatic circumstances.
Neither James nor Lynsey is necessarily aware that he’s doing this. They’re slowly developing a friendship. But he’s also providing a recovery template for her. James has suffered a great deal, too. He’s haunted by the memory of a traumatic event that changed his life. By listening to James and through her interactions with him, Lynsey is slowly able to work through her own issues and begin to put her life back together.
James isn’t some magical guru. He’s just another human being who’s lived a life that’s included suffering. But spending time with him helps Lynsey get outside her own head. Their talks give her perspective. They also give her a friend.
Henry is also helped by knowing Lynsey. He’s lonely. He’s been working through his own issues in relative solitude for a long time. Significantly, one of the first things he offers her is a ride.
Henry’s performance is at its best when he’s simply sitting, talking, opening up. Anyone who’s ever worked through trauma (i.e. anyone) knows the whole story never comes out in the first attempt to tell it. Telling the first part is hard. Then you tell a bit more…a bit more…you add nuance. Then maybe one day you tell the darkest part, the most personally shameful part, the part that really haunts you.
If the other person has been listening, they already know the deepest part of the secret you’re holding back. James, at one point, says something like, “But I didn’t tell you this…”
But she knows. He did tell her. He told her non-verbally. He may have omitted some details, but his face and body (and even his omissions themselves) revealed the emotional heft of his secret, including the gist of what he thinks he’s hiding. The part of the secret that James withholds for so long is that he believes what happened is all his fault. But Lynsey already knows that (and so do we) because that’s why the story haunts him in the first place. His mouth only gives out partial information, but his body language tells the entire truth.
Henry’s performance is captivating because he’s just talking. He makes James seem like a real, average person, just sitting there talking, gradually opening up about a horrible thing. He’s Oscar worthy here because though he does nothing flashy, we find his story spellbinding and can’t look away from his face. In his sighs, his silences, we look into his eyes and see more than some people can say with pages of dialogue.
I’ve seen Brian Tyree Henry do this before. He’s uncannily good at “let me tell you this slow, measured story” characters. He’s so captivating.
It helps that his character already seems kind and trustworthy. I like his reaction as he realizes that Lynsey actually does not know her phone number. There’s a subtle but key shift in how he perceives and approaches her there.
I’m thrilled Henry is finally nominated for something. Every time he shows up in a movie, I say, “Oh I love him! He’s such a good actor.” It’s almost become a joke. He’s versatile, too. I love him in “let me tell you a haunting story” mode, like he is here, but he was also fantastic in Bullet Train, one of the few movies we saw at the theater this summer.
His performance here is a standout because the rest of the film is kind of lowkey, and he’s expert at bringing surprising power to understated interactions.
Why He Might Not Win
I don’t see how Henry could win this year. I expect most people will vote for Ke Huy Quan. Is Everything, Everywhere All at Once as popular with the Academy as it is with the rabble? Probably. It has eleven nominations. Clearly someone liked it.
My daughter just told me that though she loves Ke Huy Quan, her vote would go to Brendan Gleeson. I think she’s onto something. If Quan doesn’t win, surely Gleeson is next in line.
Causeway was not very widely seen. And it’s also not the kind of film that will make people exclaim, “Yes! This was my favorite movie! It was the greatest movie of all time! I’m going to run out and tell EVERYONE to watch it right now.” It’s not that kind of a film. I’m thrilled Henry got the nomination, but I don’t think it’s his year.
Judd Hirsch
Age: 87
Film: The Fabelmans
Role: Uncle Boris, estranged brother of Sammy Fabelman’s maternal grandmother who turns up out of nowhere to mourn his sister and tell colorful stories about Hollywood and his dramatic start in the circus.
Nomination History:
Previously nominated for Best Supporting Actor in 1981 for Ordinary People (1980).
Why He Should Win
I’m glad Judd Hirsch is nominated. I loved that part of The Fabelmans. While in a fragile state, the mom gets a phone call from her dead mother in the middle of the night. You don’t know if she’s hallucinating/having an awful premonition/getting messages from beyond the grave/some combination. Then what almost looks like a police car pulls up outside. I was bracing myself for catastrophic tragedy, and then, nope, it’s actually a taxi. Surprise!!!! It’s Uncle Boris!!!!
And then the next thing you know, he’s in there telling them all his stories about working in the circus.
How can you not like Uncle Boris? His introduction is set up so well by Steven Spielberg. You’re so relieved nothing horrible has happened, that you’re automatically glad to see him, even though you don’t know who the hell he is! It’s great!
And then he starts giving Sammy all this earnest, thoroughly impractical advice, which I found riveting. I was leaning forward in the theater, shoving popcorn into my mouth, thinking, Please give me your wisest, most impractical advice, Uncle Boris! Please tell me how I should live my life!
Online advice is so unhelpful. If you’re anything like me, reading it will only send you into a self-loathing frenzy and lead to overwhelm freeze and complete executive shutdown. I need advice from the guy who ran away to join the circus and then got swept into a dark corner of the motion picture industry.
I know it’s only a small part of the movie, but Judd Hirsch undeniably makes an impression.
And he’s not just comic relief. Despite his ostentatious, old-lion-tamer panache, he doesn’t just make an impression on Sammy because he’s an eccentric kook. He’s come to mourn his sister. Not only does he give Sammy encouragement to go into entertainment and demonstrate that he understands him, but he also tells him he can be a filmmaker and show up for his family. A lot of actors could burst onto the scene, raving like a crazy old lion tamer. But it takes more than enthusiasm to sell the emotional heft of the scene. When Boris gives Sammy life advice and demonstrates mourning behavior, Hirsch shows some of the same intensity he displays during his psychiatric sessions in Ordinary People. It’s a different kind of intensity. What this character has to do within the story makes the role more difficult than it may seem on the surface. Sammy has to respect and believe what Boris is saying. What Boris says directly influences Sammy’s behavior in a way that Sammy’s father’s pleas have largely failed to do. It’s one thing to play the loud, crazy stranger and another to play the loud, crazy stranger someone trusts enough to obey. Hirsch makes it work.
Why He Might Not Win
If this were twenty years ago, Judd Hirsch might win because he’s eighty-seven and had a great career and won’t get another chance. Best Supporting Actor used to work out that way a lot. But recently that’s been happening far less.
Hirsch makes a huge impression in the movie, but I don’t think the part is substantial enough to win him an Oscar. We don’t see much range. (I’m not saying Judd Hirsch doesn’t have range, just that he’s dialed all the way up to eleven at every moment of this performance.)
In another year, he might win an Oscar for this. But this year he would need a more nuanced performance than Brendan Gleeson and a better narrative than Ke Huy Quan.
I don’t see how Hirsch could win, but I could imagine the movie winning something. Even if it doesn’t, Spielberg fans will remember this as the director’s most personal film (probably), and anyone who watches it for that reason will see Judd Hirsch’s scene stealing performance as Uncle Boris.
Barry Keoghan
Age: 30
Film: The Banshees of Inisherin
Role: Dominic Kearney, the village idiot who successfully finds a way to leave the cursed island village of Inisherin.
Nomination History:
This is Keoghan’s first nomination.
Why He Should Win
As played by Barry Keoghan, Dominic is always in motion. Most of the island’s inhabitants have a certain rigidity. But Dominic never stands completely still. He always shifts, wiggles, lurches backward as if he’s a bit off balance. In that way, he truly is similar to Siobhán. Her body language is dynamic, too. Every time she’s offended, outraged, exasperated, she draws back and reacts facially. Everyone else is a lot more stoic and physically rigid.
So Keoghan makes Dominic standout visually. His body language often telegraphs uncertainty, timidity, submission, insecurity, and yet, he’s surprisingly assertive and often boldly tactless. He seems a little off balance (literally), and puts the audience a little off balance, too. There is something off about Dominic. It’s a very physical performance. He might as well be dancing. Keoghan uses his body to shape our impressions of the character.
Pádraic calls Dominic “the village gom,” and at first, he does seem like a gentle-spirited, lovable idiot. He’s a kindhearted person, just not very bright. Barry Keoghan slips into this type of character so naturally that initially, I trusted Pádraic’s verdict, but as we learned more of Dominic’s backstory, I suddenly began to reassess my snap take on the character. Certainly he’s socially awkward, misreads cues, has little tact. Maybe he is slow. But he doesn’t honestly seem any dumber or weirder than anyone else on that island! And surely anyone would be damaged by years of relentless physical and sexual abuse. So Dominic is a more complex character than he seems at first glance.
(I mean, how bad is his judgment, really? He wants to hang around someone who is consistently nice to him, and he has a crush on Siobhán who is the coolest person on Inisherin by a mile. He doesn’t mope around cutting his own fingers off or harass people once they tell him “no.” He peppers his conversations with a bit of French, from time to time. There’s more to the character than meets the eye.)
Keoghan is so good at playing characters like this, people who seem a bit young for their age, are a bit odd. What I find special about his performance here is that he never holds still, but we don’t particularly notice. Dominic is so consistently odd that his oddness becomes unobtrusive, and we stop noticing him. Perhaps we should pay more attention to him in his final scene with Pádraic, followed by his final scene with Siobhán, but we’re busy thinking about Pádraic and Siobhán. At least I was. I was busy thinking, “Ouch! How will that affect Pádraic! Oh, Siobhán is so gentle with him. How is she going to break her brother’s heart now?” I lost sight of Dominic. And then he was gone.
I like the physicality of the character, the way his body language doesn’t always match his intent, and the way Keoghan makes him so unoffensively odd that we stop noticing his oddness, and he fades into the background.
Why He Might Not Win
Like Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Banshees of Inisherin has four acting nominations. They’re all thoroughly deserved, but Keoghan is least likely to win. I can imagine winning scenarios for Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Kerry Condon, but I just don’t see a path to victory for Barry Keoghan. Why would voters who loved Banshees vote for Keoghan over Gleeson, one of the film’s stars, arguably pulling off a much trickier role? Keoghan is consistently good in an “addled youth” or “simple boy” role. I’m sure he can play other things well, too. But here he’s tackling a type of character he’s played a variation of many times before. Without Dominic, the film could still work (though it would be impoverished by his loss). Without Brendan Gleeson’s Colm, there is no story. And how often does Gleeson play a frustrated musician whose fingers are eaten by a donkey when he falls into a grave depression? Colm feels like more of a challenge for Gleeson than Dominic is for Keoghan. If Farrell and Gleeson were both in lead, I could see why Martin McDonagh enthusiasts might vote for Keoghan in supporting. But as things stand, surely people who love the film would be more likely to vote for Gleeson than Keoghan. Is he great in the part? Absolutely! But he’s only thirty. Someone of his talent will have more chances to win an Oscar. (The real question is—is he going to play the Joker in a sequel to The Batman?—because…I hope so!)
Ke Huy Quan
Age: 51
Film: Everything Everywhere All at Once
Role: Waymond Wang, devoted if imperfect husband of Evelyn who sometimes exasperates her and occasionally annoys her—until the day he shocks her by transforming before her eyes into another (much more exciting) person named Alpha Waymond who tells Evelyn he desperately needs her help on a dangerous mission on which the fate of every known universe depends.
Nomination History:
This is Quan’s first nomination.
Why He Should Win
As a child, I loved Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I was five when it came out, and the film broke just after they ate the eyeball soup. My mom and grandma calmly explained we’d get a raincheck and come back another day. I was aghast such a thing could happen.
I loved Short Round for the uncomplicated reason that he was a kid (like me!) off having adventures with Indiana Jones (certainly where I would rather have been because—how cool!) Short Round is different from a lot of young movie characters. He is a co-adventurer with the adult protagonists. Indiana Jones, Willie, and Short Round are all experiencing that adventure together.
So when Michelle Yeoh’s character is stressed out and demoralized, feeling like she’s the worst possible version of herself and none of her childhood dreams have come true, and the actor who played Short Round shows up to lead her away on a magical adventure—that really worked for me!
Quan wasn’t an obscure child actor. People remember Short Round. (And Data from The Goonies, too.) Ke Huy Quan is burned into people’s imaginations for his adventures as a kid. He should be leading audiences on adventures as an adult, too. (And not just kids liked the character. My dad immediately knew who I was talking about. He said, “He must be almost thirty by now,” and we wept about how old we are.)
The idea that Quan wasn’t being offered good roles is frustrating because at any point between then and now, I think audiences would have shown up to watch him if they knew he was starring in a movie. He’s a good actor with charismatic screen presence.
This is why it’s good I’m not an Academy member. Before I’d even seen Everything Everywhere All at Once, I heard his narrative, and I was sold. I was like, “Yes, give him the Oscar! He must have it!”
But now I have seen the movie several times, and he is fantastic. Like everyone in that cast, he’s playing more than one person, and early on, I enjoyed watching his transitions from one Waymond to another. His moment in the elevator is delightful. And honestly, one of my favorite moments in the entire movie is when he eats the Chapstick. For some reason, that’s burned into my mind, probably because the first time I watched, I had no idea why he was doing that. It’s a great way to get everyone’s attention.
Quan also gets some of the most beautiful lines of the movie, talking about love and kindness in two realities at the same time. Perhaps I’m biased because Waymond reminds me of my own husband (and myself when I haven’t fallen into uncharacteristically deep depression). But these speeches he delivers not only resonate with the audience, they allow the same actor to be impassioned and tearful in one language and contemplative and wistful in another in the same moment (for us). We see a more complete meditation on kindness because the movie shows us two Waymonds at once, and that also highlights Quan’s versatility as an actor (who speaks English, Mandarin, and Cantonese).
He’s a huge presence in the movie. Some of its most memorable moments belong to him.
Why He Might Not Win
He’d better win!
Brendan Gleeson also gives a conspicuously outstanding performance, and he’s never won an Oscar either. But barring any major surprises between now and March 12, I feel like Quan is going to win Best Supporting Actor.