Alan Arkin
Age: 78
Film: Argo
Role: Lester Siegel, the veteran Hollywood producer who agrees to help CIA operative Mendez make a fake movie in order to rescue
six Americans who escaped from the Iranian Embassy during the Hostage Crisis.
Nomination History:
Won Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 2007 for Little Miss Sunshine (2006).
Previously nominated for Best Actor for The Russians are Coming (1966) and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1968).
Why He Should Win
I don’t know if anybody’s keeping track, but Ben Affleck is three for three. First he directed Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone, and she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Next he directed Jeremy Renner in The Town, and he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor.
And now Alan Arkin in Argo. One almost might begin to get the idea that Ben Affleck is a gifted director, but if that were the case, then the Academy surely would have nominated him for Best Director this year because they’re always very fair.
Alan Arkin plays probably the most sympathetic and charismatic character in Argo, Lester Siegel, the Hollywood producer who agrees to help with the extraction plan simply because it’s the right thing to do. He doesn’t have to get involved. He’s under no obligation—except the obligation we all have to one another. (I keep thinking of The Brothers Karamazov, “All are responsible to all for all.”) As played by Arkin, Siegel weighs the decision carefully. Arkin lets us watch Siegel turning the matter over in his mind and without saying a word gives us a pretty good idea of why Siegel agrees to help. Everybody loves a character who finds the courage to do what we all hope we would choose (and fear we might not) under similar circumstances.
The Academy probably loves the character, too. As I said in my review of Argo, “it’s like the screenwriter dropped a member of the Board of Governors into a hostage crisis to play the hero. What’s not to love?”
Arkin’s performance doesn’t rely on big, showy moments, but he has such presence and quiet skill as an actor that he manages to steal the show. He also has the best (and funniest) lines, including the movie’s memorable—though R rated—catch phrase which begins as a humorous rebuff and becomes a kind of desperate rallying cry.
Why He Might Not Win
When I got home and started doing some research, I was not surprised (though slightly disappointed) to learn that even though there was a real Lester Siegel, Arkin is actually playing a composite character who represents aspects of several producers involved in the project. Of course the best character is going to be the one who’s too good to be true! Siegel has the courage, wit, and charisma of several men. That’s because in reality, he is several men—plus the screenwriting talents of Chris Terrio.
That’s not really going to hurt Arkin’s Oscar chances, of course. I mean, the film is “based on true events.” It’s not pretending to be a documentary. If you don’t get the vibe that the story is enhanced for the screen as you watch the police cars chasing the plane down the runway, then would you like to buy a watch?
The real reason that Arkin probably won’t win is that he’s a respected veteran up against other respected veterans—everyone in this category already has at least one Oscar—who have more difficult and showier parts.
Still, Arkin does have a chance because of the film’s popularity. Best Supporting Actor seems like it’s up for grabs this year. Tommy Lee Jones did win for Lincoln at the SAGs, but I can see any of the nominated actors walking away with the prize. Because Arkin won recently and because he has the least showy part of all the nominees, I’d peg him as least likely to win. But a win for him is not impossible.
Robert De Niro
Age: 69
Film: Silver Linings Playbook
Role: Pat Solitano, Sr., a long-time football fan and newbie book-maker with OCD tendencies who ritualistically watches Eagles
games and tries to puzzle out his relationship with his troubled, bipolar son.
Nomination History:
Won Best Actor Oscar in 1981 for Raging Bull (1980).
Won Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1975 for The God Father: Part II (1974).
Previously nominated for Best Actor for Taxi Driver (1976), The Deer Hunter (1978), Awakenings (1990), and Cape Fear (1991).
Why He Should Win
Like Daniel Day-Lewis, Robert De Niro is a great actor. Unlike Daniel Day-Lewis, De Niro apparently really enjoys appearing in zany comedies like Analyze This and Meet the Parents. He’s been doing that kind of thing for almost fifteen years. (I’m not saying he should give up comedy. He obviously enjoys it. And he’s lots of fun as Captain Shakespeare in the underrated Stardust.) But for whatever reason, De Niro’s more serious films of the past decade haven’t gotten any attention.
Now finally, Academy members have the opportunity to award this truly stellar actor another Academy Award. De Niro has finally found a comedy worthy of his heavy-hitting dramatic talents. If I were an Academy member, I’d be thinking, If Daniel Day-Lewis deserves three Oscars, then so does Robert De Niro!
De Niro makes it all look so easy, but on paper, Pat Solitano, Sr. is a pretty difficult part to play. One of the first things we learn about Mr. Solitano is that he’s banned from Eagles games for life because of violent behavior. Anyone who follows football should be thinking, How violent must this guy be? Eagles fans think his behavior is objectionable!? He’s too extreme for Eagles fans?! (No offense Eagles fans, but I’ve seen you on TV aggressively booing your own players while they’re winning. That’s why I’d love to go to an Eagles game. They’re interactive! Imagine the excitement!)
The point is, before we’ve even really gotten to know Pat Sr., we learn that he is so violent that he scares other violent people and makes them call the authorities for help. Then you see him sitting on the couch, and he seems so sweet and vulnerable and funny. You think, How could this sweet family man be such a scary, violent monster? But you believe it, because he’s played by Robert De Niro.
Pat Sr. clearly exhibits OCD behaviors (and possibly developed them as a strategy for coping with a mood disorder himself. I know a little something about that. You’re so afraid of losing control that you develop ritualistic behaviors to exercise maximum control over everything in your environment. Director David O. Russell knows something about that, too. He’s said he made this movie for his bipolar son, and anybody who’s seen that Lily Tomlin clip on YouTube knows David O. Russell’s son’s father has quite a temper himself.) Pat isn’t a bad man. He isn’t some abusive monster. He’s a loving father. He just has issues.
It’s pretty hard to be violent, OCD, funny, and sympathetic. Any actor can make a violent, mentally ill character funny. And a good actor can make a violent, mentally ill character sympathetic (with emphasis on the pathetic). But it’s pretty hard to make that character sympathetic and funny at the same time, especially if you’ve convinced us that he’s violent and mentally ill.
And usually when the rare character who is that complex comes along, he’s the protagonist of the story. To make a supporting character with that much going on work on screen, you need a great actor. You need someone like Robert De Niro.
When Pat Sr. breaks down crying as he has a heart-to-heart with his son, we feel for him. We believe him. We hope for better things for him, as well as for his son. As played by De Niro, Pat Sr. is easily as complex as Pat Jr. and Tiffany, but he manages to communicate that to the audience with a fraction of the screen time.
The performance is so good because you don’t think, “De Niro deserves an Oscar,” as you watch. You think, “Poor Mr. Solitano. He’s not perfect, but he really loves his son. I hope everything works out for them. I should call my dad.”
Why He Might Not Win
So far, Tommy Lee Jones has won the SAG, and Christoph Waltz (not nominated at the SAGS) has won the Golden Globe. Jones wasn’t there to accept and Waltz didn’t seem to have a speech prepared. The critics’ picks are all over the place. Nobody knows who is going to win, and there’s been no indication that anyone favors Robert De Niro.
Full disclosure: Since Leonardo DiCaprio and Dwight Henry aren’t nominated, I want Robert De Niro to win, but I don’t get to vote.
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Age: 45
Film: The Master
Role: Not L. Ron Hubbard. Really. Lancaster Dodd is not supposed to be L. Ron Hubbard. He’s just a science fiction writer who forms his own religion in the 1950s and spends a lot of time at sea, not auditing people (it’s called processing, duh) on a yacht.
Nomination History:
Won Best Actor Oscar in 2006 for Capote (2005).
Previously nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Charlie Wilson’s War (2007), and Doubt (2008).
Why He Should Win
He’s good. Everybody keeps raving about Joaquin Phoenix, and I think Hoffman acts circles around Phoenix because Hoffman doesn’t look like he’s acting. Phoenix spends half the movie squinching up his entire face and body like an amazing human cartoon character, and meanwhile Hoffman just stands there emitting Lancaster Doddness as if he can do nothing else. Then again, the reason that the movie is so good (yes, I liked it) is that Hoffman and Phoenix give such entirely different and perfectly complementary performances.
Right now, I think Jones is the most likely to win (though not so likely that you’d call a win by anyone else an upset). And I’ve arbitrarily decided that I want De Niro to win (partially because I think he actually can). But on the merits of these performances alone and out of these nominated actors, I actually think Philip Seymour Hoffman deserves to win. (Of course, when doesn’t he?)
Sadly, Hoffman’s best scene can’t be his Oscar clip because it ends with a screamed obscenity that combines the walking form of America’s favorite breakfast meat with the objectionable part of Alan Arkin’s classic line from Argo. They might show the scene anyway and bleep it, but what makes it so powerful is the abrupt, shocking turn at the end when Dodd (winning to that point) suddenly loses control and undoes almost all of the positive momentum he has built.
And that performance of “Slow Boat to China,” it’s so weird! If a lesser actor had to do that, I really don’t think the scene would work. Because he’s gifted, Hoffman pulls it off and manages to convey so much meaning without having any spoken lines explaining why on earth he’s suddenly decided his feelings are best expressed in song.
If the world were fair, Hoffman would win. The Master deserves some acknowledgement. Even if it’s not Anderson’s best film (though I like it best of all his films), it’s still excellent on so many levels. I can’t believe the score wasn’t nominated. The film ought to win something.
Why He Might Not Win
People hardly ever win for playing religious figures in controversial films. Hoffman didn’t win for playing a (possible) pedophile priest in Doubt, and I doubt he’ll win for playing Not L. Ron Hubbard, either.
All pretense and sarcasm aside, everybody knows that P.T. Anderson was thinking about L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology when he created Lancaster Dodd and the Cause. Why else would he have screened the film for Tom Cruise (whom Anderson directed to a Best Supporting Actor nomination in Magnolia)? The director doesn’t deny the obvious connection, even though he seems to want to downplay it.
Anderson’s film is far from a scathing indictment of The Cause, but Scientologists still have plenty of reason to be offended. If you revere someone, any less than reverent portrayal of that figure is going to be offensive to you and to those who share your beliefs.
The thing is, Scientologists aren’t the only ones upset and disappointed by the film. Apparently, a lot of people expected a scathing indictment of Scientology. And I can see why they’re disappointed, too. If you firmly believe that a movement is deceitful, harmful, and even evil (or if you just really love gossip), it’s very annoying when someone finally makes a movie about it that culminates in the cinematic equivalent of a giant, ambivalent shrug (and one of the most unusual performances of “Slow Boat to China” ever captured on film).
And then there are people who could care less about Scientology. They just think it’s not a very good movie. And they’re pretty vocal about it.
Like all the men in this category, Philip Seymour Hoffman has already won an Oscar. He’s an exceptional actor who chooses great projects and always stays in the spotlight. So, there’s no real doubt about it. He’s going to win another Oscar. He’s a young man (for this category), and he’ll probably turn in two or three Oscar caliber performances next year alone.
There’s no need to go out on a limb and award him for this performance.
If he somehow does win—not outside the realm of possibility because of these five performances, his is definitely one of the best—people will probably take the win as some sort of statement about Scientology. Again, I don’t expect him to win, but if he does, trust me, the real statement the Academy is making is, “Philip Seymour Hoffman is a great actor, and he gave the best nominated supporting performance this year.”
Tommy Lee Jones
Age: 66
Film: Lincoln
Role: Thaddeus Stevens, the Congressman so progressive and genuine in his defense of the equality of races that he makes Abraham Lincoln look like a shady politician.
Nomination History:
Won Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1994 for The Fugitive (1993).
Previously nominated for Best Actor for In the Valley of Elah (2008).
Previously nominated for Best Supporting Actor for JFK (1991).
Why He Should Win
Wow, those of us who watched the Golden Globes know one thing for sure. If Tommy Lee Jones actually enjoyed the comedy of Kristen Wiig and Will Ferrell as they joked about Meryl Streep’s nomination for Hope Springs, then he is the greatest actor of all time.
Seriously, I have never seen anyone look so intensely curmudgeonly. Does he do absurdist stand-up (or, in this case, sit down)? Was he trying to look like a grumpy caricature of himself? (Was he part of their routine? He really sold it.) I found his inability to take a joke a little off-putting myself. (I instinctively mistrust people who never smile. I assume they want to be mean to me, and I’m very fragile.)
My husband more charitably suggested, “Maybe he was mad because everybody around him had the flu.” Then when Jones didn’t show up to accept the SAG, my husband speculated, “Maybe now he has the flu.”
Maybe. But I wish he’d gotten to make a speech because when the Oscar is still up for grabs with no overwhelming frontrunner, I think acceptance speeches matter.
If you ask me, Jones should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his work in Hope Springs instead. I’m serious. He’s amazing in that movie. Before seeing it, I never dreamed that he had such tremendous range. Jones is clearly outside his comfort zone in that film, playing Arnold with such vulnerability that his very vulnerability becomes strength. He outshines co-star Meryl Streep—really, he does!—and how often does that happen?
But perhaps his outside-the-Tommy-Lee-Jones-box performance in Hope Springs will bolster his chances of winning for Lincoln. He is wonderful as Thaddeus Stevens. He’s perfect. As I watched Lincoln, I couldn’t imagine anyone else playing the part.
In fact, all three of my favorite moments in the movie feature Stevens—Lincoln’s compass talk, the showdown with Sally Field, the wonderful way Lee Pace’s character gets put in his place. Who doesn’t love to watch Stevens discover the perfect words to retain his integrity without sacrificing political gain?
Tommy Lee Jones turned in finer performances in Hope Springs, No Country For Old Men, and Flags of Our Fathers, but I haven’t seen him completely dominate a movie like this since he won for The Fugitive. I’m not knocking the amazing lead performance by Daniel Day-Lewis (or the criminally underrated lead performance by Harrison Ford), but everybody loves Lincoln already and expects him to be the hero of the piece. (The film is named Lincoln, after all.) But if Lincoln is the name above the marquee driving ticket sales, then Thaddeus Stevens is the breakout star. Whether he wins or not, Jones has turned in a performance that no one will ever forget. (How can they? Day-Lewis is going to win a third Best Actor Oscar and immortalize the entire production! It will be on a million lists forever.)
Why He Might Not Win
Thaddeus Stevens seems an awful lot like Sam Gerard in The Fugitive and Agent K in Men in Black (except for the wig). That’s not a bad thing exactly. I mean, google images of Thaddeus Stevens. Tommy Lee Jones is a dead ringer. And when you need a Tommy Lee Jones type, why would you look further than Tommy Lee Jones?
He won the SAG, and in the past that’s been a more accurate Oscar predictor than any other precursor award, but is that still true after the SAG-AFTRA merger? Winning the SAG in the past meant that a body remarkably similar to the one voting for the Academy Award voted for you. But now that all the AFTRA members get to vote, too, I’m not sure that there’s the same degree of overlap. We’ll see what happens.
Something else is bothering me, too. Is it really Jones who deserves the acclaim here, or are critics, SAG voters, and Academy members truly responding to the strength, courage, wit, and forward thinking bravery of Thaddeus Stevens (as brought to our attention by Tony Kushner’s screenplay)? I suppose it doesn’t matter. Actors win all the time for playing characters that win our hearts or exemplify what the Academy views as virtuous and courageous living.
Jones is the front runner at this point, but he’s not way out in front like Daniel Day-Lewis and Anne Hathaway. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Christoph Waltz
Age: 56
Film: Django Unchained
Role: Dr. King Schulz, the Old West’s most lethal dentist since Doc Holliday. Schulz begins as a bounty hunter who respects the law because he believes in justice. But when he meets a slave named Django who is on a quest to find and rescue his wife, Schulz begins a journey that ends in a way he never could have anticipated.
Nomination History:
Won Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Inglorious Basterds (2009).
Why He Should Win
As soon as I saw Inglorious Basterds, I understood immediately why Christoph Waltz was swooping up all the precursor awards. Giving anyone else the Oscar would have been insanely stupid. Waltz was revelatory, astonishing.
Since then, his films haven’t fared as well critically (or at the box office), but who cares? He’s already nominated for a second Academy Award just four years after his Best Supporting Actor win as Colonel Hans Landa, the man who gave Nazis a bad name. (Well, okay, so he wasn’t the only one.)
See Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained and you won’t be able to deny Waltz’s versatility. He doesn’t just play evil exquisitely. He’s also pretty proficient as one-epiphany-away-from-good.
Judging by the results on screen and at awards ceremonies, if I were Waltz, I would work with Quentin Tarantino whenever possible. The way things are progressing with these quasi-historical revenge fantasies, next time around, I expect Waltz to play an innocent German being unfairly abused. We’ll see what Tarantino’s got up his sleeve.
As Dr. King Schulz, Waltz gets the most complete character arc in the movie. Schulz finishes his journey. He starts off largely sympathetic, then has a marvelous epiphany (involving the relationship between what is legal and what is moral) that pushes him all the way to good. Django may be the titular character, but Schulz is really a co-protagonist (some might argue the co-lead). As Scultz, Waltz pulls off comedy, drama, and suspense equally well. And though he’s strong in every one of his scenes, the best part comes when Calvin’s sister starts playing “Für Elise.”
Why He Might Not Win
Even though I loved Christoph Waltz in Inglorious Basterds (and like him here; he’s an immensely talented actor), for Django Unchained, I would have nominated Leonardo DiCaprio or Samuel L. Jackson over Waltz. Of course, I can appreciate why Academy members didn’t. Waltz’s character is the most morally centered one in the movie. Dr. King Schulz is someone audiences can root for without feeling embarrassment or discomfort.
DiCaprio, on the other hand, plays a character ten times as evil and sadistic as Hans Landa and every bit as charming. His Calvin Candie is a man who revels in spouting ethnic slurs, betting on human fights to the death, and feeding runaway slaves to the dogs. In the same year that Lincoln is getting so much attention, it’s hard to reward a pretty and privileged young white male for playing a vile-yet-charming racist murderer. Why nominate that guy when you can nominate the one who’s all about justice, the one who prefers not to rape, torture, and butcher people who have done nothing wrong?
And, no matter how good the performance, after being accused of racism when they honored Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer for playing maids, there’s no way the Academy’s going to nominate Samuel L. Jackson for playing a dark-hearted, crotchety old house slave who is even eviler than Candie and looks a cross between Uncle Remus, Uncle Tom, and Uncle Ben (the one from the rice box, not the one from the “With great power comes great responsibility” flashbacks.) Samuel L. Jackson ought to get more recognition from the Academy, but I guess he’ll have to settle for getting cast in any popular movie or franchise he wants and having millions of dollars.
So in my opinion, Waltz doesn’t even give the strongest performance in the movie. (Now he plays the strongest and most likable character, but that’s a different thing.)
Also, the award is for Best Supporting Actor, and part of the reason Waltz’s character is so appealing is that he gets the most development. Waltz and Foxx are really co-leads. Django is the protagonist, but Schulz is a protagonist, too. He’s in the movie way too long to be just the stock inspiring teacher figure. He learns something himself.
Still he won at the Globes (when he clearly wasn’t prepared), so he could win at the Oscars.
To be perfectly honest, as things stand now, all of the nominees in this category have a decent shot at winning. And any of them will be a deserving winner. They’ve all won before for a reason. They’re an exceptionally strong group of career actors. I look forward to Oscar night to see how things play out.