Sally Hawkins
Age: 41
Film: The Shape of Water
Role: Elisa Esposito, a mute cleaning lady working at a top secret laboratory in the 1960s who lives her life by the clock until she shares a boiled egg with a test subject, falls in love with him, and helps him to escape from the facility.
Nomination History:
Previously Nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Blue Jasmine (2013).
Why She Should Win:
A mute cleaning lady begins a romance with a captive fish man by feeding him boiled eggs.
When the movie with this plot has thirteen Oscar nominations and is being hailed as one of the most magical romances of all time, then you’ve got to figure that the actress playing the mute cleaning lady must have something really special.
And she does.
Guillermo del Toro wrote this part for Sally Hawkins because she possesses essential qualities he hoped to see in the character. He’s called her luminous in several interviews, stressed that acting is more about listening than delivering lines, repeated again and again that love leaves you speechless, revealed that he asked her to study video of a particular set of silent actors.
Preparing for this role required intensive work in a limited window. Not only did Hawkins have to learn passable period sign language (ASL), practice the choreography for a big musical number, and brush up on her singing for a fantasy sequence, but she was also faced with the far more difficult and elusive task of projecting luminous innocence while making the audience care about her, understand she was falling in love with a fish man, and accept this romance as not only believable but beautiful.
That’s no easy task. It’s not like if Hawkins suddenly became unavailable, you could just drop the Rock into the role and still make it work. (And that’s an effective strategy for most movies.)
I agree that Hawkins has a luminous quality. You see it in Happy-Go-Lucky and especially in the recent Paddington films. If someone can play platonic leading lady to a bear, why not love interest to a fish?
My favorite aspect of Hawkins’s beautiful performance is that she appears to be starring in her own movie-within-a-movie. The big production number late in the film basically confirms this. Elisa is the star of a classic Hollywood love story playing exclusively inside her head. She’s off in a dream world, and yet everyone around her finds her irresistibly compelling. She’s a nobody, barely connected to the world, and falling in love pulls her even further from ordinary reality, and yet somehow her actions are driving the entire plot.
She has a wonderful scene with Richard Jenkins that is often used as a clip from the film. In impassioned sign language, Elisa insists that she must help the man she loves and pleads that unlike others, he doesn’t see her as incomplete. He simply appreciates her for what she actually is.
What I really love is her anger. As played by Hawkins, Elisa is completely unafraid to show her rage and frustration. I also love her boldness. She’s such a brave character because she has nothing to lose. While others around her boast of their own importance, complain about injustices, reach out with words to quell loneliness, Elisa just goes around doing whatever she wants. It’s not just that she’s emboldened by love, either. Love looks good on her, but she’s always bold, right from the start. She’s almost like a cat, ignoring the rules, exploring stuff that draws her curiosity, looking someone right in the eye while knocking his stuff on the floor if she happens to feel like it. Many around her seem to assume that she’s meek because she’s mute. But she’s not meek. She’s just disinterested in conformity. She shows up late for work practically every single day, and while she’s there, she quietly follows her own inclinations rather than the rules, as if some part of her knows she is not subject to those rules.
Sally Hawkins does an amazing thing. She makes everyone around Elisa love her–the audience, all the characters–and feel protective of her as if she is sweet and needs help. The kind characters want to protect her. The guy with the empathy defect wants to possess her. But if you look closely at the character’s actual behavior, she’s not sweet and helpless at all. She’s strong willed and capable. You could call her rebellious except her behavior is motivated less by rebelling than by never recognizing “authority” as the authority in the first place. She always acts according to her own sense of what must be done.
It’s a lovely, strong, and memorable (you could even call it career-making) performance.
Every one of the nominated lead actresses this year deserves the win, and Sally Hawkins is one of the three with the most realistic chance of taking home the Oscar. Even though I like Frances McDormand and Saoirse Ronan’s chances better, The Shape of Water is so popular, and the performance is so lovely that I could definitely imagine a scenario in which Hawkins wins big on Oscar night.
Why She Might Not Win:
Lately actors have been denouncing Woody Allen right and left. To me, that seems somewhat odd. I mean, nothing has changed since the early 90s, so Hollywood’s decision to turn on him right now and act as if they’ve either a) always felt that way or b) never known seems almost Orwellian. I’d imagine that this is a terrifying time to try to navigate the politics of Hollywood. One day, someone is receiving an award; the next, he’s a pariah. (And I mean like literally, the next day.)
To be clear, I’m all for cleaning house, believing victims, and holding sexual predators accountable. But it’s got to be so confusing. What must Dylan Farrow think? It’s like all of Hollywood suddenly gave her a big hug and said, “There, there. No one will hurt you again because it’s trendy to believe you now.” I look forward to reading about the current climate in Hollywood in future history books because that is going to be some good reading.
Stars have recently begun to turn on Allen, to declare how much they regret ever working with him. Greta Gerwig says she didn’t know. Timothée Chalamet announced he will donate his salary from his upcoming Woody Allen film. Kate Winslet (not nominated this year for her work in Allen’s Wonder Wheel) made the pretty bold choice not to denounce Allen when asked about it. (She’s much braver, but, then, she already has her Oscar and repeat nominations.)
I mention this only because Sally Hawkins earned her only previous Oscar nomination for playing Cate Blanchett’s sister in Allen’s Blue Jasmine. (She should, of course, have been nominated for her amazing, Golden Globe winning turn as Poppy in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky, but sometimes the Academy gets things wrong.)
Every Oscar season brings targeted scandal, and I well remember 2014 when Dylan Farrow published an open letter in the New York Times reiterating that her father had molested her and shaming actors for working with him. Cate Blanchett did not denounce Woody Allen (who was cleared by a court back in the 90s). She won the Oscar anyway because Hollywood wasn’t having an organized women’s movement then, so nobody cared.
So far, I haven’t heard anybody mention that Sally Hawkins got her nomination for work she did with Woody Allen. Maybe people are trying not to mention it because she seems like such a kind, meek person, and she didn’t allegedly molest anybody, and she doesn’t deserve the aggravation. That is what I think, too.
Now nothing may come of this connection at all. (Mira Sorvino is getting all kinds of love right now, and nobody is rubbing it in that she got her Oscar working for Woody Allen. Of course, maybe she headed that off herself by writing an open letter to Dylan Farrow apologizing for not believing her and denouncing Woody Allen.)
I find it highly likely, though, that in the coming weeks, somebody will press Sally Hawkins to denounce or defend Allen. To tell the truth, I’m stunned that no one has done it yet. This shouldn’t hurt her Oscar chances this year–unless she chooses not to denounce Allen when pointedly asked, and then somebody makes a big deal about it in the news. I’m sure Harvey Weinstein wasn’t the only one who ran dirty Oscar campaigns, so to me, something of this nature seems incredibly likely to happen. But maybe I’m just cynical.
Another thing that could hurt Hawkins’s chances is her shyness. Every other actress in this category seems totally at ease–sparkling even–when doing press. Hawkins always seems overly meek and a bit uncomfortable. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. It’s just that all five of these nominated women are doing equally deserving work, so elements like popularity and charm are bound to factor in to the selection process.
Giving a mute performance has its downside, too. Despite the difficulty of playing a mute character (and the loveliness of the performance), Hawkins may find herself overshadowed by her speaking co-stars in some voters’ estimation. Octavia Spencer and Richard Jenkins are so easy to love, and Michael Shannon is even easier to hate.
The film did get thirteen nominations, though, and Hawkins is marvelous in it. Though I’d guess she’s a less likely victor than Frances McDormand or Saoirse Ronan, she could easily be the winner on Oscar night.
Frances McDormand
Age: 60
Film: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Role: Mildred Hayes, a grieving and tormented mother who attempts to shock the community and shame the local police into action by renting three billboards reminding them that they have yet to solve the rape and murder of her teenaged daughter.
Nomination History:
Won Best Actress Oscar in 1997 for Fargo (1996).
Previously nominated for Best Supporting Actress for North Country (2005), Almost Famous (2000), and Mississippi Burning (1988).
Frances McDormand gives the best performance by a lead actress this year, and for that reason, she deserves to win the Oscar. Of course, that’s just my opinion, but I’m right.
I’ll admit that I’m probably a bit biased by how much I loved the film and by how much I love all of McDormand’s work. Her Oscar winning turn as Marge Gunderson in Fargo (1996) is still one of my favorite performances ever, and I’ve seen a lot of movies.
Two Of McDormand’s best moments have stuck with me since I saw the film last fall, and I replay them in my mind fairly often. One is Mildred’s silent, tortured recollection of her regrettably animated final conversation with her daughter. The other is the look on her face as her ex-husband (well played by John Hawkes) reveals something she doesn’t expect to hear when they meet by chance in a restaurant. That expression alone is enough to clinch the Academy Award for her, if you ask me. Her reaction to an startling interruption during one interrogation is magnificent, too. I suppose it’s fitting that McDormand is now in direct competition with Meryl Streep’s attacked-by-a-Dementor eyes and torturous pause on the phone.
Honestly, the power of three of the five performances this year can be summarized by insisting, “No, but seriously, you should have seen the look on her face!”
Martin McDonagh wrote the role of Mildred Hayes for Frances McDormand, and it’s easy to see why he thought of her since the whole film has much in common with Fargo tonally.
She’s the perfect actress for the role, and she absolutely nails it. I’ve heard vague complaints about Mildred’s incessant profanity and shocking violence. But I mean, she was a victim of domestic abuse who waited too long to fight back. I’m sure she wanted a better life for her daughter, but it’s too late for that now. Her daughter is dead. At this point, why would she hold back? What has holding back gotten her? A dead daughter whose murder remains unsolved.
I love that we get to watch Mildred’s raw grieving process and accompany her all the way to a startling epiphany that genuinely changes her.
I think this is a brilliant film that uses ugly things to make a beautiful point, and a big part of the reason it works so well is McDormand’s exceptional turn as Mildred Hays.
Come on, give the woman an Oscar!
Why She Might Not Win:
In her SAG acceptance speech, McDormand rather strangely concluded, “This is really great, and I thank you. I come out of the woods every few years, and you invite me to the party. But there’s a lot of young ones coming up, and they need doorstops, too, so let’s think about that.”
Surely I’m not the only one who found that statement somewhat baffling. Was she telling her fellow actors not to vote for her for the Oscar? It sort of sounded like that. I mean, what else could she have meant? Unless she launches her new door stop boutique within the next few days, I’m going to have to assume that she was recommending that Oscar voters select someone else.
I presume the “young ones” she has in mind are Saoirse Ronan, Margot Robbie, and Sally Hawkins since Streep is eight years older than she is and quite well stocked on door stops herself. (Oscar nominations hadn’t been announced yet at the time of her speech, but this category was incredibly easy to predict.)
I have great respect for Frances McDormand’s talents, but I must disagree with her here. Even though she’s one of our best working actresses, she has only one Oscar which she won twenty years ago. She’s hardly over lauded. I mean, come on, Frances, every house has at least two doors. (I learned that from the film Capote.) I don’t think there’s any actress in history who can justifiably complain of being given too many Oscars. I mean, every time a bell rings, Meryl Streep gets an Oscar nomination, and yet even she only has three door stops.
Maybe this is McDormand’s way of saying that people needn’t feel obligated to vote for her just because they like her as a person. Maybe she’s saying that she recognizes that there’s a lot of talent in the category this year and honestly won’t be hurt if she doesn’t win.
But I think the person who gives the best performance of the year ought to be rewarded with the Oscar. I understand awarding Oscars for other reasons, if the reason is truly compelling. But this year nobody in this category needs that Oscar any more than Frances McDormand. (The best argument for giving it to someone else based on need would be honoring Streep because she’s closing in on seventy and needs to pace herself to break Hepburn’s lifetime record.)
Saoirse Ronan is twenty-three and already on her third nomination. I’d say odds are pretty high that she’ll get another chance. First time nominee Margot Robbie is only twenty-seven with the looks and personality to become a huge star. (I mean, she’s already kind of a huge star. Who doesn’t know Harley Quinn?) She’ll have other chances, too. Sally Hawkins is such a brilliant actress, and finally everyone has noticed that. She’s a bit older than the other two, but she’s British, and they seem less ageist over there. She’s going to continue doing quality work and also become more and more well known to American audiences whether she wins or not.
So this idea that young people need to be given a chance seems insane, especially in Hollywood where it’s normally older actresses who need to fight tooth and nail for a break.
Nevertheless, Frances McDormand said that, and I suppose some people may take her at her word.
Also (of course, since it’s an Oscar front runner) Three Billboards now finds itself mired in scandal. Some say the film includes African American characters just to be trendy but neglects to give them a significant role in the story. (This is kind of true. The African American characters in the film all seem like great people, but that’s basically the problem. The white characters are all a bunch of crazy monsters, which is what comes of being explored in depth.
So what if Martin McDonagh doesn’t actually know much about the (fictional) town of Ebbing, Missouri (which he created)? He’s not running for mayor. He wrote a play. I’m pretty sure that Shakespeare’s knowledge of race relations in Venice was a bit on the sketchy side, too. So there’s precedent for this kind of thing.
Now I’m not trying to trivialize racial unrest in Missouri. In fact, there are probably plenty of reasons not to like the film–you could say it normalizes vicious violence, for example–but I don’t see how any of that lessens the quality of McDormand’s performance.
I want Frances McDormand to win the Oscar, and that this point, she’s the clear front runner, but that can change, and every other woman in this category is also deserving.
Age: 27
Film: I, Tonya
Role: Tonya Harding, the first female figure skater in the United States to land a triple axel in competition who then understandably became famous because of the widespread belief that she hired a guy to whack competitor Nancy Kerrigan in the kneecap.
Nomination History:
This is Robbie’s first nomination.
Why She Should Win:
If the part of Tonya Harding had been played by Margot Robbie in real life, then Harding would still be skating professionally today. As the film shows, Harding was painfully unable to charm the judges. She also couldn’t convince the court of public opinion that she wasn’t somehow complicit in organizing the attack on Nancy Kerrigan.
Harding never looked the part of America’s sweetheart, but Robbie does (Australian and dressed down though she may be). And that matters.
Despite having no particular investment in the story, I went into this film vaguely but firmly convinced that Harding was “the bad guy” in the Nancy Kerrigan incident, that she was somehow inextricably involved in the criminal mayhem that injured her fellow skater.
But thanks to Robbie’s amazingly sympathetic turn, I left the theater believing and pitying Tonya. Seeing the story from her viewpoint does change your impression of her. (Or it changed mine, anyway. I’ll bet it wouldn’t move Nancy Kerrigan too much.) This occurs partially because of the way the film is structured, but, mostly, it’s Robbie.
Unlike Tonya Harding, Margot Robbie is classically beautiful. (I’m not insulting Harding’s looks, but Robbie is a movie star. Her face has a higher start value.) More than that, Robbie is a good actress. She has said that she played the part as if she completely believed Harding, as if Harding completely believed her own version of events. It’s very possible that Tonya Harding did believe her own version of events, that while she did not have the most complete, objective view of what was happening, she was, at least, being honest. But Tonya lacked the skill (the gift even) to move others, to make them understand her sincere emotions.
Robbie has the gifts and the skill to allow others to see Tonya Harding as Tonya Harding views herself. The film suggests (fairly convincingly) that many of Harding’s difficulties arose because she could never master the charm aspect of skating or life. And Robbie could win a gold medal in charm.
She’s done tons of press for the movie. Search YouTube for some of her recent talk show appearances if you’ve missed them. She’s delightful to watch, full of energy and seemingly at ease as she shares funny anecdotes about saving her mother from a snake or meeting Barrack Obama under the most embarrassing of circumstances.
In the film, Robbie also shows off dramatic acting chops that many of us never even suspected she had. (Her Harley Quinn is pretty irresistible, everybody’s favorite Halloween costume and arguably the saving grace of Suicide Squad, but her infectious charm in that role barely scratches the surface of her dramatic talents.)
Robbie is heart-breaking when Tonya misguidedly begs the court room judge to change his mind near the end of the film. And the final encounter between Tonya and her mother LaVona is the most gutting thing I’ve seen on screen this year. It’s too bad this film didn’t get a Best Picture nod (though Tatiana S. Riegel did get an editing nomination causing us to geek out because we watch her brother Sam on Critical Role).
Aside from showing off her charm and skill as Tonya, Robbie also displays great athleticism and grit. This is a pretty physically demanding role. Again and again, the film reminds us that no American but Tonya Harding had successfully performed a triple axel in competition. So, obviously, Margot Robbie is getting a little help from stunt doubles and CGI. But holding that against her is like faulting Charlton Heston for relying on special effects to part the Red Sea. No, Robbie can’t skate as well as actual Olympians, but she did put in serious hours on the ice preparing for the part. I’ve heard her estimate in interviews that she practiced a few hours a day, five days a week for three or four months. That’s a lot of skating. I mean, my toes get uncomfortably cold and damp after just half an hour at an ice rink. Robbie put in actual hours with an actual coach and took actual falls. That gets her a 10 from me (or whatever the more confusing to calculate equivalent of a 10 is these days.)
Why She Might Not Win:
I, Tonya simultaneously presents so many conflicting accounts of the same story, trying to make the we-may-never-know-what-happened-for-sure vibe work to its advantage. But I’ll tell you who knows what happened for sure. Nancy Kerrigan. Some stranger connected to Tonya Harding whacked her in the leg with a police baton just a month before the Olympics. That happened. For sure.
Robbie’s Tonya makes it seem as though after her sentencing, the whole world forgot about her fairly quickly. But (though it may have seemed that way to Tonya Harding) obviously that’s not true. People who were alive and cognizant in 1994 still remember Tonya Harding. (I tend to doubt she could have found work as a wrestler if her notoriety had faded so quickly.) Yes, I’m sure the press did stop mobbing her house, but that’s because we had heard all we needed to know.
I’m quite sure that the very idea of this film left a bad taste in many mouths. How well done the actual film is doesn’t matter. How worthy the performance is doesn’t matter, either. Some people are just going to have a knee jerk reaction to a project that gives a voice to Tonya Harding. It’s even worse that she actually uses that voice to try to convince people that she’s just as much a victim as Nancy Kerrigan.
Now, granted, the movie doesn’t exactly champion Harding. It repeatedly (one might even say incessantly) points out that she’s an unreliable narrator (or at least, that other, contradictory versions of her story exist). But despite what it claims, the film does seem to privilege Harding’s own narrative. Plus Margot Robbie plays Harding with such passion and makes her so sympathetic. While doing press for the movie, Robbie said that while in character as Tonya, she behaved as if she believed Tonya’s version of events were one hundred percent true. When confronted with a protagonist played by someone talented and beautiful, audiences don’t always have a great grasp of nuance. It’s very easy to leave the theater with the impression that you’ve just seen a film completely exonerating Tonya Harding (or trying to). And even if the filmmakers protest that this was not their intention, Harding herself seems to be giving a lot of very visible interviews lately, and Allison Janney invited her to the Golden Globes as her guest, and she sat at the table with all the rest of them.
I think I, Tonya has a problem similar to Robbie’s earlier film The Wolf of Wall Street. People may worry that it’s praising (or normalizing) immorality. And those who watch and enjoy it may later find themselves feeling a little bit gross and complicit.
Will this kind of potential reaction among voters really hurt Robbie’s chances? Well, it certainly doesn’t help her. Inevitably after the nominations have been announced, the strangest, most conspicuously contrived scandals start circulating everywhere, and with a movie based on the life of Tonya Harding, drumming up moral outrage is not going to be too difficult.
A greater hurdle for Robbie is her newness on the Oscar scene. She’s the only lead actress this year nominated for the first time. (Even Saoirse Ronan, four years younger, is already an old pro with two previous nominations under her belt.) Traditionally, twenty-something leading ladies do win Academy Awards a lot. But Robbie has only recently gotten the Academy’s attention. Most people still think of her as Harley Quinn, or maybe the sexy second wife of Jordan Belfort.
Even her own vivacity and charm could work against her. Without a doubt, Robbie can light up a room. But her Tonya is pretty delightful, too, far more beautiful and appealing than the real Tonya Harding, some detractors of the performance have argued.
As I see it, Robbie is actually the least likely of the nominees to win Best Actress this year. All of her fellow nominees star in pictures that are nominated right along with them, and (though nominated for editing) I, Tonya didn’t make the cut.
That said, Margot Robbie would be a deserving victor, and a huge surprise at the ceremony would not be unprecedented.
Saoirse Ronan
Age: 23
Film: Lady Bird
Role: Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson, a Sacramento native in 2002 journeying through her senior year at a Catholic high school, attempting to experience the magic of first love, discovering the version of herself that fits best, and navigating a tricky relationship with her complex mother who clearly loves her but often makes her want to jump out of a moving car.
Nomination History:
Previously nominated for Best Actress for Brooklyn (2015).
Previously nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Atonement (2007).
Why She Should Win:
Saoirse Ronan did win the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy, and she has a decent shot at winning at the Oscars, too.
In Lady Bird, you totally and at every moment believe that she’s a teenager who grew up in Sacramento. But in real life, she’s a twenty-something who grew up in Ireland.
Watch the movie and one of her many talk show appearances back to back. The difference in her accent, mannerisms, and posture is nothing sort of stunning.
I mention this because if you graduated from high school in 2002 in Sacramento, then to play Lady Bird McPherson, you’d just have to act natural. But Saoirse Ronan isn’t just hanging out being herself. She’s putting in just as much work as Meryl Streep playing Margaret Thatcher, or, this year, Katharine Graham. And she’s so good. She inhabits the character completely, making it look effortless.
But, of course, her performance is far more than a Sacramentan accent and a slouch.
Lady Bird spends the film searching for the best version of herself, or, perhaps more accurately, trying out slightly tweaked versions of herself and deciding which one she wants to be as she journeys beyond high school into the future. Even though she’s a teen girl coming of age, she has refreshing confidence. Somewhat ironically, too, she already has a very strong self-concept. At heart, she’s actually quite centered and stable, a truth she has somehow failed to notice. In other words, she already knows who she is. It just takes her a long time to discover that her actual identity is the one she’s been searching for all along.
The film is great and made me think constantly of my sister (the same age as the character), my daughter, and sometimes even myself. Obviously Greta Gerwig’s screenplay and direction deserve the accolades they’ve gotten, but no matter how clear your vision for a character, you need the right actress to inhabit her, or she’ll be lost to the audience.
Ronan’s performance feels so effortlessly authentic that Lady Bird sometimes seems like a documentary (a documentary about someone theatrical and image conscious, granted, like Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds in Bright Lights). Her chemistry with Laurie Metcalf makes the movie exceptional. As we experience the film, we feel like we’re watching a real mother and daughter negotiating their passionate, delicate, and constantly evolving relationship.
The prom dress shopping sequence beautifully showcases this dynamic, but my favorite thing in the entire movie may be the part Lady Bird is given in The Tempest. It’s perfect for her, and her reaction is equally perfect.
Saoirse Ronan is so young, and already she’s given three Oscar nominated performances, all amazing, all different.
If she doesn’t win this year, I’m sure she’ll have another chance soon.
Why She Might Not Win:
Well not everybody can win, and they all deserve it.
Actually, of everyone nominated, Saoirse Ronan has the least compelling case for not winning.
So far, no last minute Oscar scandals swirl around her. Everybody seems to love Greta Gerwig’s film (or at least not to hate it). Ronan comes across as quirky and personable in real life. On paper, she’s the ideal winner.
I think, though, that after winning the drama Globe and the SAG, McDormand is the clear front runner, giving a stronger and more difficult performance than Ronan. If acting were an Olympic event, I’d say that McDormand’s start value is higher. Ronan has a beautiful skate, but McDormand goes for the triple axle and nails it. (Some would disagree, though. I mean, the very Irish Ronan is doing that lovely Sacramentan accent.)
(And, of course, difficulty doesn’t always matter. Laurie Metcalf gives a more difficult and nuanced performance than Allison Janney (whom I love), and Janney has suddenly started winning everything, but that’s partially because she’s a beloved industry vet who feels due for recognition like McDormand.) (A strong case can be made than Janney’s part is actually just as difficult as Metcalf’s, too, but that’s an exploration for another write up.)
If people take Frances McDormand’s bizarre advice and decide to hand out the next doorstop to someone else, I do think Saoirse Ronan is next in the doorstop receiving line.
If Ronan does win big on Oscar night, I will not be surprised at all. A win for her feels extremely possible, and like every other actress in this category, she deserves it.
Meryl Streep
Age: 68
Film: The Post
Role: Katharine “Kay” Graham, owner of The Washington Post who must decide if she should publish
Nomination History:
Won Best Actress Oscar in 1983 for Sophie’s Choice (1982) and 2012 for The Iron Lady (2011).
Won Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1980 for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979).
Previously nominated for Best Actress for The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), Silkwood (1983), Out of Africa (1985), Ironweed (1987), A Cry in the Dark (1988), Postcards from the Edge (1990), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), One True Thing (1998), Music of the Heart (1999), The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Doubt (2008), Julie and Julia (2009), August: Osage County (2013), and Florence Foster Jenkins (2016).
Previously nominated for Best Supporting Actress for The Deer Hunter (1978), Adaptation (2002), and Into the Woods (2014).
Why She Should Win:
I highly respect Steven Spielberg’s genius and character and am (like most people) a long term fan of his work.
But if I’m being brutally honest, then I have to say that without Meryl Streep’s fantastic performance as Kay Graham, The Post would not deserve its Best Picture nomination.
I’m not trying to insult the film. I admire its sentiment, and I applaud someone like Spielberg who has a very loud voice for going out of his way to deliver a message he believes in and for speaking up for those who on their own have no access to such a visible platform. I also think Tom Hanks is great in the film, and I would have been happy to see him in the (crowded) Best Actor line-up.
But without Streep, The Post would be just another good movie. It’s her performance as the dilemma-facing Kay Graham that makes it something great.
I saw The Post really late. Before I watched it, the other women in this category all felt like locks while the fifth slot seemed vaguely open.
Maybe Michelle Williams will get it, I thought after watching All the Money in the World. This is the best performance I’ve ever seen from her. Maybe the scandal over Mark Wahlberg getting paid so much for the re-shoots will motivate people to vote for her.
Then I saw Streep.
I saw Streep and felt like an idiot because the fact of the matter is that the fifth slot was never really open. It always belonged to Meryl Streep.
To be honest, I feel kind of bad for all other actresses because Meryl Streep is just better than everybody else. Always. I don’t know if she made a deal with the devil, or she’s actually a demi-god, or she’s secretly from some other planet inhabited by super thespians. But whatever she has, no one else has got it.
Now obviously she’s very gifted with accents, and I know she puts in a lot of work, meticulously studying every character she plays. So I’m sure if we watched footage of the actual Katharine Graham, we’d find that Streep sounds just like her, same accent, same cadence, same mannerisms. Her portrayals of real people are always nuanced and thorough.
But that’s not what impresses me here. It’s her energy, her presence, her intensity, and, honestly a sort of ineffable quality. She fills the room and the screen (and the theater) with Kay’s hesitations, pauses, indecisions.
One aim of this film is to show the key role a woman played in a significant episode in American history. Surrounded by men in what seems to be a male-driven story, Streep drowns out their chatter with her silences and overpowers their incessant advice with the power of her tortured pause. At one point we’ve got like ten famous actors loudly arguing a point, and yet we only care about what’s going through Kay’s head (and being telegraphed to us by her face) as she hesitates and considers.
Most people are just not that fascinating to watch as they pause and hesitate and vacillate and consider and decide. But Streep is. There could be an entire three ring circus going on at the same time, and we’d still choose to watch her, and it wouldn’t even feel like a choice.
Kay Graham’s deliberation and decision become the focal point of the story, but there’s no need to add a bunch of action to make her contribution look worthy of our attention. Her decision is the action. We watch her decide, and that becomes the most exciting and memorable part of the film.
Also, there’s one moment where her eyes turn black as if she’s warding off a Dementor attack and she seems to pull all of the energy in the entire room into her face.
How in the world does she do that?
Why She Might Not Win:
Streep probably won’t win. She usually doesn’t, after all. If you erroneously include this year’s record twenty-first nomination to make the math easier, then she wins one-seventh of the time. More correctly, you could say that she wins three-twentieths of the time. Neither of those figures inspires a great deal of confidence.
Let’s put it this way. Streep is nominated (deservingly) almost every single year. If she were to win this year when all four of the other nominees are so worthy and so exciting, everyone would be disappointed.
Another factor against Streep is that not everybody loves The Post, or, at least, not everybody loves The Post enough. (If they did, it would have earned more than two nominations.)
Of course, not everybody loved The Iron Lady, and Meryl Streep still won. But that was back in 2012 when she hadn’t actually won an Oscar since Sophie’s Choice (1982). To put it in perspective, I was three when she won for Sophie’s Choice, and when she won for Iron Lady nearly thirty years later, my daughter was three. To say that she was due in 2012 is a ludicrous understatement, but now she has her third Oscar as well as plenty of time left to win a fourth.
She does deserve the Oscar for her turn as Kay Graham, but this year, all of the nominated women deserve to win. I will be shocked beyond belief if Meryl Streep walks away with the statuette.