Cynthia Erivo
Age: 33
Film: Harriet
Role: Harriet Tubman, who escapes slavery and runs North to freedom, then returns South (again and again) to rescue others as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Guided by revelations from God, Harriet lives her life with a sense of certainty, courage, and conviction that enables her to achieve remarkable things.
Nomination History:
This is Erivo’s first acting nomination. She is also nominated for Best Song this year.
Why She Should Win:
For me, Erivo’s most compelling moment comes when Harriet has a quiet conversation with Monáe’s Marie while bathing. Here Harriet is so calm, talking about incredible things that would make anyone else quake. But if you like showy, emotional scenes, Erivo is also great as Harriet responds with broken tears to an extremely personal betrayal on her first trip back to the South. (Watching this scene, I actually thought, “Oh yes, she must have been great as Celie in The Color Purple.” I read the book just a couple of years ago, and it’s quite easy to imagine her in the role.) Erivo plays moments of strength and confidence equally well. My husband was particularly impressed as Harriet stands up to her brother and wades into the river, another powerful scene.
Why She Might Not Win:
Frankly, the cynic in me thinks Erivo only got nominated in the first place because she’s playing Harriet Tubman, and that sounded important to Academy members who are sick of being called out as a bunch of racists. In moments of vexation, I could not stop raving about this. “Here’s what I think,” I ranted at my husband. “The other four actresses were practically locks, leaving in voters’ minds one slot left for Erivo, Lupita Nyong’o, or Awkwafina. I’ll bet Erivo won out because of the significance of Harriet Tubman. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the members voted for Harriet Tubman’s name and did not even watch any of those three performances.” Since I’m writing this down, I’ve chosen to distance myself from these cynical thoughts by presenting them as dialogue. The official me doesn’t quite think this, but I’m not willing to distance myself from these ideas any further. They’re in quotation marks now, not gone.
Age: 35
Film: Marriage Story
Role: Nicole, (the becoming-ex-wife of New York based playwright/director Charlie) who wants to return to her roots as a screen actress in Los Angeles. Unsatisfied but adrift, Nicole turns to a divorce lawyer to help her articulate her dissatisfaction, put her goals into words, and get custody of her young son, so that he can be with her while she lives and works near her family in LA.
Nomination History:
Johansson is also nominated this year for Best Supporting Actress in Jojo Rabbit.
Scarlett Johnasson is great as Black Widow (one of the few engaging female heroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe), but it’s nice to see her play somebody else for a change since she’s always been an excellent actress. When you consider how many of her early films either circled or received Oscar nominations, it’s honestly kind of shocking that she herself has never been nominated until this year.
As I’ve said, I prefer her scene-stealing turn in Jojo Rabbit, but what she does in Marriage Story is certainly Oscar-worthy as well. She brings a raw honesty to Nicole, and true vulnerability on screen always carries risk and takes courage. Johansson plays Nicole as a real woman with emotions, desires, and fears that everyone should find relatable. If you don’t see a bit of yourself in Nicole, chances are she does remind you of someone you know. A lot of women go through divorces or intense break-ups (particularly in Hollywood). When you watch Marriage Story, you feel it, reliving memories of your own past (or ruminating on places of friction in your present relationship). Even if you have never gone through the painful process of divorce, you must have experienced some of the feelings Nicole is processing. These are incredibly human emotions.
The scene that impresses me most is the long monologue she delivers to Laura Dern’s Nora Fanshaw, when that lawyer character encourages her to articulate what went wrong and what she wants now, then gives her time and space to speak without interruption. Johansson’s line delivery in this scene is so natural, which made the discovery that the scene was not at all ad-libbed particularly astonishing to me. I heard Scarlett Johansson say (in an interview with Chris Evans) that screenwriter/director Noah Baumbach put every single word on the page and expected no deviation from the script. I’ve since heard multiple people attached to the production say the same. When you hear how natural the dialogue sounds and see how raw and intense the emotions are in every scene of Marriage Story, you’ll understand my shock at this information.
Watching Johansson in Marriage Story feels like spending time with a close friend who is going through a painful divorce. She emotes tremendously, but you never feel like you’re watching someone give a performance. You believe the performance. It’s great work.
Why She Might Not Win:
I suppose that Johansson could win, but I just find it so unlikely. First of all, why would the Academy suddenly turn their backs on a talented performer portraying a beloved icon whose memory brings a tear to every eye?
To be clear, I am definitely not saying Johansson doesn’t deserve this nomination. Her performance is fantastic, and so different from what she does in Jojo Rabbit. I just wish there were a way to squeeze Nyong’o and Awkwafina into the category. And I’m not a fan of the way Marriage Story sidelines Nicole for so long, forcing us to be more sympathetic to Charlie for long stretches. It’s hard not to watch this movie and see a male writer/director trying to show us how he was the more sympathetic party in his divorce. (Then again, I do acknowledge that Noah Baumbach wrote the entire thing, so everything I know about these characters comes from him. So perhaps there’s a degree of self-awareness and self-condemnation in his work, too. If I feel these things while watching, perhaps that is because he intends to provoke this response in the viewer.)
Saoirse Ronan
Age: 25
Film: Little Women
Role: Jo, the March sister who dreams of becoming a professional writer and does so with much less injury to others than Ronan’s Briony Tallis in Atonement.
Nomination History:
Previously nominated for Best Actress for Brooklyn (2015) and Ladybird (2017).
Previously nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Atonement (2007).
Why She Should Win:
Saoirse Ronan is so perfect for the part of Jo March that it’s not even necessary to watch the movie to understand how she would play the character. Apparently she told writer/director Greta Gerwig that she would play Jo, and Gerwig thought the bold act was “a very Jo thing to do.” For Gerwig, it just makes sense to cast an actress she has already loved working with in a film she has always wanted to adapt and direct. This is a case of perfect casting, and Ronan follows through on all her promise. She could not give a better performance.
The world has already been graced with a number of lovable cinematic Jos. (I’m personally not a fan of June Allyson, but Katharine Hepburn is even more perfect for the part than Ronan, and Winona Ryder makes an excellent anchor for the 1994 Little Women, even if her Jo is softer than most.)
Ronan began as a brilliant child actress, so it would be a nice touch to give her an Oscar for the film where she finally grows into a woman. She’s at her best in her scenes opposite her publisher (Tracy Letts, who played her father in Ladybird). Her sparkle of triumph at moments of success is luminous. But we get to see more sides of Jo, too. She’s vulnerable in her heart-to-heart with Laura Dern’s Marmee in the empty attic. She’s also a very angry Jo, but there is nuance to her anger. She’s passionate and hurt when she lashes out at the professor, frustrated to hurt when she lashes out at Laurie, and ready to kill when she’s provoked by a particularly vicious act of cruelty by Amy.
To be honest, Ronan slips into the character so easily that little needs to be said about her performance. The work speaks for itself. I do think this particular version of Little Women (though excellent) is unbalanced by its unusual attention to the character of Amy (played by scene-stealer Florence Pugh). But at every moment that Jo gets a chance to shine, she does.
Why She Might Not Win:
Perhaps I should hold it against Ronan that her performance didn’t surprise me. I thought I knew how she would play the role, and I was right (whereas Daniel Day-Lewis truly surprised me as Abraham Lincoln). I don’t hold it against her, but I do think a little sparkle of surprise might have elevated the performance. My husband put it this way. “She was good, but she’s always good.”
Still I could easily imagine Ronan pulling off a surprise win.
If anyone does take the Oscar from presumed winner Renée Zellweger, my hunch is that it will be the four-time nominee with no wins who is starring in the film the whole internet says was unfairly snubbed for Best Director. There’s such intense furor surrounding supposed the miscarriage of justice for Little Women, an outcry that is almost excessive in light of the fact that the film did get six Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture. Snubbed director Greta Gerwig (who was nominated for her screenplay) wrote what was practically a novel expressing her gratitude to the Academy for the nominations the movie did get, but fans of the film (and of women in general) remain outraged on her behalf.
It’s in no way realistic to imagine that Gerwig will win Best Director by a write-in vote, though I think she does have a decent shot at Best Adapted screenplay. But with the press relentlessly keeping Little Women at the forefront of voters’ minds, perhaps some of them might be a bit more likely to vote for its star for Best Actress.
I mean, let’s face it. Saoirse Ronan is only twenty-five, and she’s already been nominated four times with no wins. She’s a very gifted actress.
Now, to be clear, I would be incredibly surprised at this point to see anyone other than Renée Zellweger win since her performance is fantastic and Judy Garland is so beloved. But if anybody does manage to swoop in and steal the prize, I would be even more stunned if it were someone other than Saoirse Ronan.
Charlize Theron
Age: 44
Film: Bombshell
Role: Megyn Kelly, the self-proclaimed non-feminist lawyer and TV personality who excels at Fox News under the mentorship of Roger Ailes, but doesn’t get much support for him when she’s attacked on air by Donald Trump. When Gretchen Carlson takes action and female Fox News employees begin coming forward with testimony that Ailes sexually harassed them, Kelly must decide whether she will side with Roger or share a harassment story of her own.
Nomination History:
Won Best Actress Oscar in 2004 for Monster (2003).
Previously nominated for Best Actress for North Country (2005).
Why She Should Win:
Charlize Theron could not be better in Bombshell. She absolutely disappears into Megyn Kelly, transforming her face, mannerisms, stance, posture, pitch, cadence, accent–everything!–into that familiar fixture of television we all know. Not only does Theron become Megyn Kelly, but she then uses the character to tell us a story we might not want to hear in a particularly nuanced and intriguing way.
Co-star Nicole Kidman plays Gretchen Carlson as a straight up hero, while Margot Robbie makes composite Kayla Pospisil a(n arguably) sympathetic victim. Only Theron plays a more slippery, morally ambiguous character. Her Megyn Kelly sometimes seems more shrewd than virtuous. In fact, her virtues appear more in line with the qualities old school men like Network president Roger Ailes would ostensibly value–shrewdness, flintiness, slipperiness, cleverness, loyalty. In the film, Theron’s Kelly says indignantly, “I’m not a feminist. I’m a lawyer,” something I remember the real life Kelly saying. But over the course of the movie, this self-proclaimed non-feminist gradually slides toward a difficult decision. Will she betray a helpful mentor whose professional guidance she values in order to stand against him with other women? Ultimately, Kelly decides to stand with the other women against Roger. She does what is right. But is it right because it is morally imperative (to prevent victimization of further women) or because it is politically expedient (to do what is best for her own career in the moment)? Does she betray Roger completely, or does she follow the type of teaching she has learned from him to stand against him publicly? And would she have turned against him if he had shown her more support during her “dust-up” with Donald Trump?
In some of Kidman’s fourth-wall breaking moments, we get the sense that she wants to bring this sort of complexity to Gretchen, too. (Kidman loves characters like this!) And plenty of elements in Kayla’s character make room for various kinds of tension. But it is really only Theron who gives an entire performance full of such conflicting energies that her character remains enigmatic. So she’s not just mimicking Kelly. She’s interpreting the character in a particularly interesting way. Her scene in the car as she tries to decide if she will stand with Roger or against him is the most riveting in the movie.
To be honest, in committing to this character, Theron is taking a risk. Despite the nuance present in the performances, Bombshell is being promoted as a film that portrays the women of Fox News as heroes at best, victims at worst. In case you haven’t noticed, most of Hollywood is not exactly enamored of Fox News. Online, I’ve seen a number of catty comments about Theron’s self-declared hesitation to play Megyn Kelly. People snarkily point out that she had no such misgivings about playing a serial killer. Those people are being deliberately obtuse, though. If you were going to star in a biopic right now, which protagonist would be considered more controversial, John Wilkes Booth or Donald Trump? Nobody is saying Booth is not a murderer. The point is that everyone acknowledges that he is a murderer. Saying, “I think Aileen Wuornos was a prostitute who killed seven men,” is not a controversial statement. Saying, “I think Megyn Kelly is a hero,” on the other hand, opens quite the can of worms.
I am not an actress, but I am a writer, and I know that to write characters convincingly, you have to be able to see the world from their point of view. I assume the same is true of acting. (Anyway, I heard Chris Evans say something like that recently.) If you want to play Megyn Kelly, you must, to a degree, embrace her. And that is harder and riskier than embracing a serial killer or an evil queen because–brace yourself for a surprise–a large number of people in Hollywood don’t like Fox News and are reluctant to consider the women who worked there as heroes of any kind. And when she left Fox News, Megyn Kelly herself managed to offend even more people. And then she went to NBC and offended even more people. So even if while researching the role, Theron eventually came to identify with Megyn Kelly’s point of view to some degree or to like her as a person, she can’t put it exactly that way when talking to her peers, or nobody will give her movie a chance. I have no idea how Theron feels about Kelly, but I know she has to be sort of cagey in promoting the movie if she wants it to get any awards love.
Of course, the timeliness of the whole #metoo, #timesup angle has helped the film. But there is still a real risk in representing Megyn Kelly as a hero.
Why She Might Not Win:
Zellweger is probably winning this, but despite the fact that she disappears into Judy Garland, Theron disappears even more into Megyn Kelly. The problem is that nobody really wants to see Megyn Kelly, and everybody wishes they could see Judy Garland again.
Another small problem might be that the Showtime mini-series The Loudest Voice (also 2019) covers much of the same material and has a longer runtime to explore the story. (I haven’t seen The Loudest Voice yet, but I’m definitely intrigued since Naomi Watts plays the same part in the mini-series that Nicole Kidman plays in the movie.)
The bottom line is, Theron deserves this Oscar just as much as Zellweger. In fact, she’s my husband’s personal choice to win, and I’m quite impressed with her, too. But we’re not members of the Academy, and we don’t get a vote.
Renée Zellweger
Age: 50
Film: Judy
Role: Judy Garland, broke, broken, and so desperate to make a home for herself and her two young children that she accepts the only stable work she can get, a concert engagement in London. Stricken that she must live apart from her children in order to earn money to gain custody of them, Garland struggles with loneliness and insomnia and sinks into depression until she finds unexpected love and gets married again, and then things get much worse.
Nomination History:
Won Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 2004 for Cold Mountain (2003).
Previously nominated for Best Actress for Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) and Chicago (2002).
Why She Should Win:
Zellweger sings. She dances. She cries. She makes us laugh. She gives thoughtful line readings and emotes in all the right places. But what’s most effective about her performance is that it reminds us of Judy Garland.
After a conspicuously long absence from the spotlight, Zellweger brings a lot of her own baggage to the film, so, logically, we might spend much of the movie wondering things like, “Where has Renée been? What’s the truth about that plastic surgery? Does she really have the pipes to pull off these songs?” But instead, once the movie starts, the only person we ever think about is Judy.
Poor Judy Garland, a wonderful soul, a loving mother, a loyal friend, and a great entertainer gone too soon! Who doesn’t love Judy Garland? (If neither her exceptional talent nor her heartbreaking life moves you, then I’ll charitably assume that you’re unfamiliar with her career and biography.)
I am not an entertainer, and I don’t struggle with addiction, but I am an insomniac with a mood disorder, as well as the mother of young children, and so many scenes of this film spoke to me personally. The moment when Judy climbs into her son’s wardrobe and attempts to comfort him through play really resonated with me. And the absolute soul-shattering heartbreak of that scene in the phone booth! If you don’t leave this movie sobbing your eyes out for Judy Garland, then you have no soul. (Maybe that’s extreme, but Judy Garland lived a life of extremity.)
Zellweger can’t sing like Judy Garland, of course, but neither could Garland herself at that stage in her life, and Zellweger does sing well.
What’s best about Zellweger’s performance is that it’s utterly egoless. Zellweger never seems to be saying to the audience, “Hey! Remember me?” Instead she uses every opportunity to disappear into the character and help us to remember Judy.
Why She Might Not Win:
Renée Zellweger is an odd person, and her acceptance speeches have all reflected that. In Judy she is unrecognizable as Renée Zellweger, but in real life, she is barely recognizable as Renée Zellweger. I really don’t mean that as a cheap shot about bad plastic surgery. Nobody in her image-driven industry would blame her for experiencing those types of difficulties. The trouble is, Zellweger has been out of the spotlight for a long time, and it’s hard from her speeches to get a sense of who she is now. Her Texas accent is as unpredictable as the weather in Texas. Sometimes it’s thick, other times completely absent. And what she says is as mystifying as how she says it. Her speeches have been often garbled, if not outright incoherent. (To be honest, I have always found Zellweger’s manner of self presentation about as odd as it is now. I long suspected that she has undisclosed mental health issues that I wished she would discuss more frankly and openly. But perhaps that was only projection on my part. There’s no law against being eccentric, but it is quite rude of me to speculate about others’ mental health.)
Now, of course, to be fair, maybe giving speeches (or being acknowledged after a long dry spell) makes Zellweger nervous. Maybe in all the partying and mingling with peers, she presents herself differently. Certainly the press she is doing seems more coherent (though even in interviews, she seems kind of jittery).
Also, it is worth noting that Joaquin Phoenix is almost certainly winning Best Actor for Joker, and because of his passion for environmentalism and animal rights 1) He vowed to wear the same tux all awards season, and 2) Immediately after the SAG awards he wore said tux to a slaughterhouse to give water and comforting words to dying pigs. (Hopefully he’s getting the tux dry cleaned in between ceremonies.) My point is, if Zellweger sometimes seems weird, she’s in very good company. She gives an excellent performance playing a beloved icon, and she will probably win the Oscar.
Of course, keep in mind that last year, almost everyone (including me) believed that Glenn Close would easily win the Best Actress Oscar that eventually went to Olivia Colman. Surprises happen.