Yalitza Aparicio
Age: 25
Film: Roma
Role: Cleo, a young domestic servant who never fails to complete her mundane daily chores as she navigates complex emotions arising from her unplanned pregnancy and the crisis facing the family that employs (and cares for) her. Cleo is the fictive incarnation of Libo, the family maid who helped raise director Alfonso Cuarón and his siblings when they were growing up in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City in the early 1970s.
Nomination History:
This is Aparicio’s first nomination.
Why She Should Win:
With this nomination, Yalitza Aparicio makes history as the first ever indigenous Mexican woman to be nominated for Best Actress.
Nobody but an indigenous Mexican woman could have played this part, of course. The story would be off-puttingly inauthentic with someone of another ethnicity in the lead role. (Not that such qualms have stopped Hollywood in the past. Ever seen the movie Dragon Seed? Katharine Hepburn plays a Chinese peasant trying to fight off Japanese invaders attacking her family farm!)
Aparicio has an unusual Oscar narrative, compelling in its own right. Before making the film, she didn’t consider herself an actress at all and even worried that the audition process might be an elaborate trap laid by human traffickers trying to kidnap her.
Because she truly is someone outside the system acting on screen for the very first time, Aparcicio brings an unstudied autheticity to the role of Cleo that a more seasoned actress might not be able to pull off. Her words are simple. Her deeds are practical. Her thoughts remain her own. When we watch her on screen, we believe that she is Cuarón’s maid Libo because we don’t know her as anyone else.
Obviously a Jennifer Lawrence or a Saoirse Ronan would be disastrously distracting in this role. To be honest, I think even a Marina de Tavira as Cleo would upset the balance of the movie. We are not supposed to be thinking about the actress. We are supposed to forget that the woman we see on the screen is an actress. And, in fact, Aparicio (by her own admission) is not an actress! And yet, here she is nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars! Isn’t that funny? (I’ll bet Emily Blunt doesn’t think so.)
Whether she admits it or not, Aparicio is now an actress. She may be a young, indigenous woman, just like the character, but she did not actually give birth on camera. So in those intense moments in the back of the car and in the delivery room, she is definitely acting. And she’s doing a very good job. The birth scene is probably her strongest moment. Throughout that entire sequence, I completely believed she was in genuine distress and never stopped to question it or consider the actress’s technique. That heartbreaking moment in the hospital room is probably the second best performance of giving birth I saw this year, and the best that’s nominated for an Oscar. (Poor Emily Blunt! At least the SAG loves you!)
Yalitza Aparicio needs to do and say very little in order to make us feel huge swells of emotion. A few words, a single expression, and we’re swept away by waves of some of the most powerful, profound feelings experienced in life. I’m curious to see what she does in the future.
Why She Might Not Win:
For all I know, Yalitza Aparicio is the best young actress of her generation. She might be a latter day Greta Garbo, Sarah Bernhardt reborn, the next Meryl Streep.
But it’s impossible to tell that based only on her performance in this movie because the genius behind the camera is doing so much of the work for her.
I understand why the Academy nominated Aparicio. Roma is one of the best films of 2018. How can you possibly nominate the movie for Best Picture while snubbing the actress who appears in essentially every scene? The entire point of the movie is to show us the value of a woman whose station in life often makes her invisible. So you can’t very well gush, “Oh I loved that film! It’s a masterpiece,” and then ignore the actress playing Cleo, especially not at a time when Hollywood is trying desperately to acknowledge and celebrate women. If you see Cleo, then you can’t pretend you didn’t see Aparicio. The Academy is probably right to acknowledge her contribution to the film.
But so many of Aparicio’s strongest moments are created by Cuarón’s careful scene building. He creates the story all around her, allowing the audience to read meaning into her silences.
In fairness, of course, Aparicio’s understated performance allows the scene to work as Cuarón intends. Her performance is good, without question. It is, nevertheless, the weakest in the category. Though I agree that Aparicio acquits herself well in Roma (her first ever film!), I think a number of seasoned actresses (outright stars) turned in better performances this year, performances that required more technical skill and revealed more innate talent. Aparicio is good here, but is she really better than Emily Blunt in Mary Poppins Returns? To be honest, now that I’ve seen seen the movie Destroyer, I’m stunned the Academy voters didn’t find room for Nicole Kidman giving the best performance of her career. Of course, both Kidman and Blunt were also contenders in the Supporting Actress category, so maybe they drew votes away from themselves.
Still, I’ll bet I could easily (easily!) name ten performances by a lead actress this year stronger than Aparicio’s work in Roma. (I will name a supporting actress who did stronger work, Marina de Tavira in Roma!) In fact, 2018 was an unusually strong year for actresses.
For months now, most people who follow the Oscars have felt pretty sure about the other four nominees in this category. But who would take that fifth slot? Frankly part of me suspects that Aparicio manged to get nominated because there were so many good choices that no one person emerged as a threat to her, and she benefited from being the star of an extremely popular, well received film.
None of this matters too much in the end, of course, because Glenn Close is winning the Oscar. I can’t imagine anyone taking it from her at this point.
Age: 71
Film: The Wife
Role: Joan Castleman, the wife (get it?) of acclaimed novelist Joseph Castleman. When her husband wins the Nobel Prize for Literature, the couple travels to the ceremony in Sweden where, prodded by prying journalist Nathanial Bone and tormented by her own unrest, Joan begins to realize that she cannot play the role of the silent, devoted helpmate much longer.
Nomination History:
Previously nominated for Best Actress for Fatal Attraction (1987), Dangerous Liaisons (1988), and Albert Nobbs (2011).
Previously nominated for Best Supporting Actress for The World According to Garp (1982), The Big Chill (1983), and The Natural (1984).
Why She Should Win:
How does Glenn Close not have an Oscar yet? That seems impossible. In her long career, she has given so many iconic performances. She’s equally compelling as Hamlet’s mother and as Homer Simpson’s. And speaking of mothers, my own used to watch The Edge of Night all the time when I was a child. Meanwhile, watching Fatal Attraction just once is an experience I will never forget. (I was nine. It gave me nightmares!) Also, in all seriousness, have you seen her Cruella DeVil? To say that she elevates the material is hyperbolic understatement. No matter the project, Close never gives a bad performance. She’s great. That she hasn’t nabbed a little gold man already is almost beyond belief! (She has three Tonys!)
For the better part of 2018, Glenn Close was on track to win Most Overdue Actress, and it seemed like her peers would probably vote for her. Now she’s going to win Best Reaction to Winning a Golden Globe, and EVERYONE will vote for her. (Maybe not literally every single one, but I’ll be stunned if she’s not Best Actress by a landslide.)
Sometimes it gets annoying to see competitive Oscars awarded for a career, but you should be happy for Glenn Close. I’ll give you some reasons why.
1) 2018 saw an unusual number of magnificent performances by actresses in a leading role. Some work not even nominated would have handily won in a more typical year. They can’t all win, but surely it stings less to lose to a seventy-one-year-old veteran actress winning for the first time for her seventh nomination. (Close was first nominated thirty-six years ago! Good grief!)
2) Close is a genuinely caring person. Seriously, if there’s a marginalized group you can think of, she’s probably an advocate for them. She has a fascinating family background that influences her present outlook and choices. She was raised in a cult, and this is clearly something she still thinks about. Her father was the personal physician of Mobutu Sese Seko and helped fight Ebola in Zaire. Her sister has bipolar disorder. (Close gave a fascinating interview touching on these things to The Hollywood Reporter a few years ago. You can still find it online.) She makes such thoughtful choices when accepting roles, all of them informed by the unusual life she has led.
3. In The Wife, the younger version of Close’s character, Joan Castleman, is played by her real-life daughter Annie Starke. Think how much it would mean to Close to win an Oscar (finally) under such lovely circumstances.
4. She genuinely deserves the Oscar based solely on her performance in The Wife.
That fourth thing is a big deal. Admittedly, several actresses would be deserving winners of the Best Actress Oscar this year, but Glenn Close is one of them.
I’ve seen The Wife twice now, and I think it improves on a second viewing (a good sign, surely). Some are calling this Close’s greatest performance. That’s hard to say for me because she has a career of exceptional performances behind her (and very likely ahead of her, too).
The Wife does allow her to show an unusual amount of versatility. Her dramatic range is on full display. In her scenes with Christian Slater, Close makes Joan so poised, compelling, controlled. But opposite Jonathan Pryce, she gets to let loose, rage, weep, lose control. Honestly, her final scene with Pryce is strong enough on its own to win her the Oscar.
(If I’m being honest, the screen chemistry Close has with Slater makes him my favorite of her scene partners. But Pryce is doing pretty excellent work himself. It’s a shame neither of their names ever came up in the Best Supporting Actor discussion. I have a lot to say about how that category turned out, but that’s a write-up for another day.)
What a character Joan Castleman is! On an initial viewing, I found the premise of The Wife a bit contrived, but when I watched it the second time, I changed my mind. The plot is not contrived, after all. We’re just getting an unusually revealing view of an extremely odd and remarkable person. To me, her final conversation with Slater’s Nathanial Bone shows us just how extraordinary and perplexing the character is and elevates the film.
Anyone who has seen Albert Nobbs knows that Glenn Close never shies away from a complicated character, and her portrayal of complex eccentric Joan Castleman is going to win her an Oscar.
Why She Might Not Win:
Glenn Close is winning.
Then came the massive publicity push for A Star is Born, noisy, extreme, overpowering, perhaps a little tone deaf (except that Ally billboard! That was brilliant!), and ultimately ineffectual. A Star is Born competed as a drama at the Golden Globes, yet Glenn Close won Best Actress, anyway. And her genuine surprise and delight was so beautiful, probably the brightest moment at any of the dismal awards shows so far this year. Unless Glenn Close has a cadre of enemies within the Academy that I don’t know about, how anyone could not want an Oscar win for her after such a touching moment is beyond me.
But does Close give the best performance in the category this year? Take the lovely Globes speech and the overdue narrative out of it, and I can see a case for several other potential winners (including Blunt and Kidman who aren’t even nominated).
There’s a moment fairly late in The Wife when Close’s character chats with the King of Sweden, then sits silently and reacts as her husband gives his Nobel acceptance speech. And boy does she react! Such silent reacting has not been seen on screen since Greta Garbo! (Truly, her incredible silent acting in that scene does remind me of Garbo. Her face looks like it’s going to explode and fly into space launched by the energy of its own suppressed contortions.) She is really, really, really feeling! I mean, if anybody has ever felt anything, I promise you, it is her!
But what is she feeling?
I have absolutely no idea.
Of course emotions as complex as Joan Castleman’s are going to be difficult to convey facially. But to me, that’s the one weakness of Close’s performance. All that acting, and yet we still don’t understand quite what is going on inside the character’s head. (The fact that she doesn’t entirely know herself complicates things, admittedly.)
But it doesn’t matter in the end because Glenn Close is going to win the Oscar, and she deserves it.
Film: The Favourite
Role: Queen Anne, last of the Stuart monarchs, who suffers from chronic physical pain and lingering psychological torment after enduring seventeen pregnancies which have ultimately resulted in no living heirs. During the War of the Spanish Succession, Anne rules a sadistic court divided by vicious party politics. Her lifelong friend (and secret lover!) Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough exerts a powerful influence over the queen and her policies until one day sympathetic nobody Abigail Hill arrives at court, seduces the queen, and slowly destabilizes everything, thereby transforming herself into yet another detestable someone.
Nomination History:
This is Colman’s first nomination.
Why She Should Win:
At the Oscars, this doesn’t count for much, but I think Olivia Colman might actually give the best performance of the year. (I say “might” because Glenn Close and Lady Gaga are excellent, too, each giving a completely different kind of performance. Pitting the three of them against each other is like comparing an apple and an orange and then entering them both in a duck race.)
One thing that separates this performance from the others in this category is its intense, rigorous physicality. Sure Close throws books. Gaga sings. Aparicio mops floors and wades into the ocean. But Colman repeatedly falls on the floor, screams, shrieks, cries, moans in pain, moans in pleasure, gorges, vomits, faints, limps, staggers. She also gained thirty-five pounds for the role. She inhabits Queen Anne in an extremely uncomfortable and impressive way.
But there’s more. Colman plays a character who is not all that sympathetic on paper and brings a stirring humanity to Anne. Sometimes we almost like her, which is about the kindest thing that can be said about anyone at that awful court.
She’s also funny and brings a robust joy to the film’s flashes of genuine comedy. And yet many of her scenes are nearly tragic and even more of them are tragic from her point of view. Some are mockable and tender all at once.
I cannot even imagine trying to play such a tricky and demanding role. Just watching her scenes is exhausting. (How do you binge and purge one minute, fall to the floor the next, and then while still wallowing on the floor near your vomit try to cajole someone into bed for a sensuous sexual romp? We’re all familiar with lines so cringe-worthy that they’re hard to deliver with a straight face. Colman must contend with not only words like this, but actions as well, all while giving the impression that such crazy behavior somehow makes innate sense to her character.)
Why She Might Not Win:
Strong as Colman’s performance is, it does have some weak points if we’re talking about winning an Oscar for Best Actress.
The obvious snag, of course, involves that “Best Actress” bit. Is Colman actually the lead in The Favourite? I mean, she’s not “the favourite,” she’s the queen. Emma Stone has more screentime. (At least, it feels like she does.) And as the story develops, the initially abrasive Rachel Weisz character grows increasingly sympathetic. Isn’t Queen Anne more accurately a supporting character in this dark, twisted story?
Now, granted, in the past, it was pretty customary for big stars to run in Lead rather than in Supporting. (This still happens sometimes. Remember in 2006 when Meryl Streep was nominated in lead for The Devil Wears Prada? She was not the protagonist. But she was the star.) That kind of excuse can’t apply in this case, though. When it comes to American movies, both Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz are much bigger stars than Olivia Colman. In fact, Weisz and (especially) Stone are legitimate movie stars, while Colman (though an accomplished actress popular in the UK) is only beginning to be known to many Americans.
Another hurdle is that despite all the acclaim it’s garnered, The Favourite is a strange movie with an dark, odd sensibility that some voters might find off-putting.
But what really hurts Olivia Colman the most is that Glenn Close gave such a touching acceptance speech at the Golden Globes.
The idea that an actor is “overdue” for an award gets a little old, but Glenn Close truly is overdue. She’s been famous for so long. She’s given so many outstanding performances. She’s got six previous Oscar nominations and no wins. She’s seventy-one years old. She’s going to win this year.
Maybe Colman does give the best performance of the year (though some would argue otherwise), but when it comes to the Academy Awards, it’s never as simple as that.
Film: A Star is Born
Role: Ally, the rising star discovered by rock legend Jackson Maine as he spirals down into addiction and obscurity. Though Ally’s star rises as Jackson’s dims, the couple’s love for one another remains genuine and constant.
Nomination History:
This is Gaga’s first nomination.
Why She Should Win:
When I first watched Lady Gaga perform “La Vie En Rose” in A Star Is Born, my mouth fell open in breathless wonder. As she finished, it took all my restraint not to leap to my feet and burst into applause. (Honestly if I had, I’m sure the two women in Joanne hats sitting near us would not have objected. I’m pretty sure they were considering a standing ovation themselves.)
Lady Gaga has an amazing, distinctive singing voice, and she certainly can sell a song.
But that’s not the revelatory aspect of Gaga’s Oscar-nominated turn as Ally, the immensely talented young woman discovered (and later married) by Bradley Cooper’s star-in-decline Jackson Maine.
I already knew that Lady Gaga could perform musical numbers like a star. (She is a star!) What I did not know is that she would be so interesting on a movie screen when not performing musical numbers. Gaga really can act (like a normal person!!!!!).
Absolutely astonished by this revelation, I suddenly realized, “I would totally watch Lady Gaga in a romantic comedy even if she didn’t sing.” In fact, I’m pretty excited about that prospect, The Usually Starring Jennifer Aniston Movie (now with Lady Gaga!). When is that coming to a theater near me? I’m ready.
Some detractors of Gaga’s performance say that she’s just playing herself. But she’s not. Yes, yes, she’s playing a young singer/songwriter who experiences a meteoric rise to stardom. At first, I also thought the role wasn’t much of a stretch. But then I heard her explain that she’s not really like Ally because Ally didn’t have the self confidence to pursue her dreams, whereas Gaga believed in herself enough to get her name and music out there and become enormously famous while still a teen. And you know what? That’s a fair point. At 32, Ally’s like, “Well, I gave up years ago because everyone said my nose was too big.” Meanwhile, at 22, Lady Gaga was a household name parading around in a meat dress.
Also, a huge strength of Gaga’s performance is how natural it seems, so relaxed, so real, so genuine. Think now. How often does Gaga seem natural in real life (when on camera, I mean)? I love Lady Gaga, but she almost never seems at ease in interviews, and her acceptance speeches are often awkward (to put it mildly). I think she’s one of those people with the unfortunate tendency to come across as fake when being genuine. She’s far more natural and at ease while playing Ally then I’ve ever seen her when she’s playing Stefani Germanotta. (Admittedly, as Lady Gaga, she knows how to work a crowd during a concert, but that’s a different skill, and you wouldn’t really say that she behaves like a regular person under such circumstances.)
Gaga makes Ally down to earth and imbues her with such kindness that it’s easy to root for the character and the actress. And then, yes, too, she does beautifully sing several powerful songs, many of which she also co-wrote. I get annoyed when people suggest that performances featuring exceptional singing and dancing are not truly Oscar worthy. (I remember when some people whined about Jennifer Hudson winning Best Supporting Actress for Dream Girls, saying all she really did was sing a song. “Well, let’s hear you sing it,” I always want to snap.) In many cases, Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper are performing live for actual crowds at Coachella. And she’s not “just singing,” she’s conveying emotion through musical performance. If you’ve ever sat through a bad high school musical, you know that it is possible for someone to have a pitch perfect voice yet sing with the emotional range of a turnip. (I always say, in a musical, I’d rather watch an actor who can’t sing than a singer who can’t act. Fortunately, Lady Gaga can sing and act.)
For most of awards season, the A Star is Born hype machine has been wildly out of control, which is off-putting. But Lady Gaga truly does give an Oscar worthy performance. I think people who say otherwise just don’t like her.
Why She Might Not Win:
Well, Glenn Close is winning.
Still, Lady Gaga probably will win an Oscar for co-writing “Shallow,” the only song from A Star is Born submitted for consideration (even though I like “I’ll Never Love Again,” better).
But here’s a scenario that appeals to me. What if Glenn Close and Lady Gaga tie for Best Actress? It happened at the Critics Choice Awards. Of course, a tie at the Oscars would be much trickier. The two would actually have to receive the exact same number of votes in a secret ballot. It would have to happen by chance. That seems unlikely.
But here are a few reasons a tie between the two of them would be so great.
1) It makes amazing Oscar trivia. Fifty years ago, in 1969, Barbra Streisand (who starred in the previous incarnation of A Star is Born) tied for Best Actress with Katharine Hepburn. Streisand won for Funny Girl, her first film, a musical about the life of entertainer Fanny Brice. Hepburn won for The Lion in Winter, playing Eleanor of Aquitaine. Glenn Close later won a Golden Globe for the same role in a television remake of The Lion in Winter.
2) The show would actually be exciting. (Just imagine if the most predictable award of the evening suddenly morphed into something that hardly ever happens!!!!)
3) The two make an excellent pair. Glenn Close is (apparently) now good friends with Lady Gaga’s mother, Cynthia Germanotta. Both Close and Gaga have been talking about this lately. And their friendship makes total sense because Close and Gaga have such compatible life philosophies. I’d love to see them awarded together, the veteran and the newcomer, both such kind, caring people. Then they can both go paint the town red with Lady Gaga’s mom!
This won’t happen, but if I were in charge of the Oscar ballots, I’d cheat to make sure it did happen. Everybody is always complaining that no one watches the Oscars anymore. (For as long as I can remember, this has been the complaint.) All I can say is, if exciting pieces of theater like this happened during the Oscars, more people would care about the ceremony.
Of course, this dream scenario (for me) is extremely unlikely. For one thing, Close’s acceptance speech at the Golden Globes was so moving and delightful that I can’t imagine anyone not voting for her. I mean, I’m sure every nominee will get votes, but as many as Glenn Close? (And I mean, Olivia Colman is bound to get some votes, too. How would both Gaga and Close manage to get more votes than Colman and also the same number of votes as each other? This is turning into a poorly conceived algebra problem. It hurts my brain!)
Lady Gaga probably will win an Oscar for acting in the future as long as she keeps making movies. I saw a recent suggestion online that she should play Amy Winehouse in a biopic, and if a Best Actress Oscar is what she wants, I think that’s an extremely good idea. Too bad she can’t star in a biopic of Madonna. (That’s an extremely bad idea, but think of the drama in the making-of documentary! Somebody could win an Oscar just for that!)
Age: 48
Film: Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Role: Erstwhile celebrity biographer, semi-professional misanthrope, and up-and-coming alcoholic Lee Israel who sells an autographed letter from Katharine Hepburn to pay for her sick cat’s surgery, then falls down a rabbit hole into the alluring world of literary forgery.
Nomination History:
Previously nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Bridesmaids (2011).
Why She Should Win:
How do you make a likeable movie about a misanthrope? How can you convince an audience to sympathize with a woman everybody easily hates without skipping over any of the qualities that make her so conspicuously abrasive?
The answer is simple. You cast Melissa McCarthy. She has a lot of experience when it comes to convincing movie audiences to embrace outside-the-box protagonists. She also has a self-proclaimed “fascination with defense mechanisms.” She approaches any character by asking herself, “What are they hiding?” and “What breaks their heart?”
In a recent Variety Actors on Actors interview with Lupita Nyong’o, McCarthy says that she finds the industry’s need to force separation between comedy and drama weird since every story is ultimately about the human experience (which, of course, includes both laughter and tears). Her innate distrust of genre should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever seen a Melissa McCarthy movie. She plays comedy and drama exactly the same way. No matter the genre, when you watch McCarthy, you will laugh, and you will cry. Basically, she’s playing the full human experience at all times.
That particular Actors on Actors interview is delightful, by the way. McCarthy compares real-life biographer-turned-forger Lee Israel to an armadillo, and Lupita Nyong’o initially seems so baffled. What McCarthy means is that Israel had the tendency to recoil, play dead, hope that potential interlocutors would just go away and leave her alone as she shielded herself behind the protective armor of barbed quips and stony silences.
Why She Might Not Win:
I love this performance, but I don’t think it’s strong enough to win, especially not in this highly competitive year. (Or, if you prefer the ol’ “Glenn Close is winning” chestnut, that’ll work, too.)
My husband didn’t even think McCarthy would get the nomination. He thought she would be a shocking snub, and that someone like Nicole Kidman might sneak into her spot. After all, the fabulous performance of her co-star Richard E. Grant is overshadowing her own work in the film. And Can You Ever Forgive Me? might not be as exciting to most people as it is to a writer like me. The film failed to get a nomination for Best Picture or Best Director.
I, on the other hand, was fairly confident McCarthy would make it into the final five. Yes, her work here is not as ostentatious or demanding as the performances of some of her fellow nominees. But did you know that Melissa McCarthy sneaked a cooler full of ham sandwiches into the Golden Globes and handed them out to her hungry peers? The actors who ate those sandwiches know. Surely some of them are Academy members.
Of course, I don’t seriously believe that the actors in the Academy nominated McCarthy just because she fed them ham sandwiches. I think it’s more a matter of this just being her moment.
Here’s the thing. Over the past couple of years, Melissa McCarthy has starred in about seven thousand movies. And yes, critics (professional and otherwise), always complain that most of them are terrible, but even so, McCarthy successfully opens these movies. People pay money to see her. She is a star. Everybody knows her. People in Hollywood seem to like her. Plus, she’s a previous Oscar nominee, and in this film, she’s doing something (a little bit) outside her comfort zone.
For Bridesmaids, she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, so getting a Best Actress nomination for Can You Ever Forgive Me? is a nice step up for her in and of itself. She’s still young. There’s no pressing need to reward her with an Oscar yet.
Barring some miracle, McCarthy’s nomination will be her award this time, but considering that The Happytime Murders was also released in 2018, ending the year with an Oscar nomination probably feels pretty darn great to Melissa McCarthy.