Bradley Cooper
Age: 38
Film: Silver Linings Playbook
Role: Pat Solitano, a thirty-something man struggling to make sense of a new diagnosis of bipolar disorder after a violent episode and attempting to reconcile with his wife despite her restraining order against him.
Nomination History:
This is Cooper’s first nomination.
Why He Should Win
When I review movies steeped in a particular world—say Zero Dark Thirty or Beasts of the Southern Wild—I always question their authenticity (and my ability to add anything relevant to the discussion). I mean, so what if Benh Zeitlin’s movie seems like an authentic depiction of life in “the Bathtub” to me? I’m not from Louisiana. I’ve spent all of one night in New Orleans (as a child on my way to Disney World, no less). What do I know? (I try to find out, of course, but how well can you ever actually understand a world that is not your own?)
But bipolar disorder, that I know. I have extensive first-hand knowledge of bipolar disorder and the way mental illness runs in families. So believe me when I say that in Silver Linings Playbook, Bradley Cooper gives an incredibly authentic performance of someone trying to put his life back together while making sense of a new bipolar diagnosis.
To be honest, he astonished me. Before this, Bradley Cooper wasn’t even a blip on my radar. I knew who he was, of course. I’ve seen The Hangover. But I never thought much of him (one way or another) as an actor and didn’t see why some people got so worked up about him. (Sexiest Man Alive? Seriously? He’s just some guy walking around in blue jeans talking. Isn’t that like 98 percent of American men?) Though I never actively disliked Cooper, I saw in him little charisma and no inkling of actual talent.
Obviously I was wrong. He’s amazing as Pat Solitano, at all times so entirely believable that you forget about the actor as you follow the journey of the character. The scene that begins with Pat’s out-of-the-blue search for his wedding video may be the most authentically bipolar moment that I have ever seen on film. Cooper plays it perfectly. His performance is never distracting. It feels entirely real. It’s amazing.
Writer/director David O. Russell has said that his son has bipolar disorder, so it’s not as if the realism was created entirely by the actor, but the scenes are definitely the actor’s to ruin. Playing “crazy” is always tricky. The temptation is to overact, and (based on most movies I’ve seen with mentally ill characters) most actors readily succumb to that temptation. To his credit, Cooper never loses touch with the character. Start to finish, he gives a strong performance, and in fact, I’d say a stronger performance than his co-star Jennifer Lawrence who (at this point) seems far more likely to win an Oscar for the film.
Why He Might Not Win
I don’t get to vote, but I’d peg Cooper as least likely to win in this category. His performance is fantastic (that’s why he’s nominated), but I don’t think I’m the only person having a, “Wow! I had no idea that Bradley Cooper could actually act” type reaction to his work in Silver Linings Playbook. Listening to him talk to reporters, you get the idea that even Cooper himself had no idea he could act before making this movie.
Hollywood is filled with false modesty, of course, but I get the vibe that Cooper speaks from genuine humility. So either he’s a very humble man, or he’s an even better actor than I ever realized. Still, I don’t think he’s going to win Best Actor over four other performers who have proven time and again that they have talent, dedication, and range.
My guess is that Pat Solitano will be the role that helps Cooper break out of the boring, Sexiest Man parts and into more serious and interesting roles that require greater talent and dedication to craft.
Cooper gives an amazing performance. A win by him would be deserved, but it would also be a pretty crazy surprise.
Daniel Day-Lewis
Age: 55
Film: Lincoln
Role: Sixteenth President Abraham Lincoln, newly elected to his second term and trying desperately to pass the Thirteenth Amendment in order to ensure that the progress he made with the “Emancipation Proclamation” would not be undone once the defeated Confederate States finally submitted and agreed to rejoin the Union.
Nomination History:
Won Best Actor Oscar in 1990 for My Left Foot (1989).
Won Best Actor Oscar in 2008 for There Will Be Blood (2007).
Previously Nominated for Best Actor for In the Name of the Father (1993), Gangs of New York (2002).
Why He Should Win
Daniel Day-Lewis is going to win. For the sake of an exciting Oscar ceremony, I usually hope for an upset, but in this case, I don’t see one on the horizon. When he does win, Day-Lewis will make Oscar history, becoming the first person ever to win three Best Actor Oscars. Almost entirely because I love to play devil’s advocate to make things more exciting, I really wanted to root against him. But then I saw the movie, and here’s the thing. Day-Lewis’s performance as Abraham Lincoln really is good, amazing actually. It certainly took me by surprise.
Just imagine Day-Lewis towering over everyone with his long legs and stovepipe heat, extemporizing the Gettysburg Address in booming historical fashion. (It’s easy. If you sort of mash Bill the Butcher and Daniel Plainview together and drop the resulting caricature into the Civil War, you get the type of Lincoln I always anticipated from Day-Lewis.) But he doesn’t play that kind of clichéd Abe Lincoln at all.
Spielberg’s direction and Kushner’s screenplay probably deserve some credit, but Day-Lewis’s Lincoln feels far more like a living creature of flesh-and-blood than all but the best of the comparatively lazy screen Lincolns that film and television have offered us previously. Day-Lewis does make Lincoln larger-than-life, but he does it in a surprising way. He makes Lincoln so small, so unassuming, so careful with every word, so meticulous with each and every gesture that his moments in every scene invariably start small and build to an astonishing crescendo. Day-Lewis’s Lincoln is a man who understands how to live on a stage just as thoroughly as any theatrical king. He realizes that true power is given rather than taken. He knows how to play to the people watching him and to make himself (and his agenda) the center of political reality.
Teddy Roosevelt may have said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” but Day-Lewis’s Lincoln shows the virtue of a slightly different strategy, “Speak softly until everyone in the room leans closer to listen to you.”
In my review of the film, I noted, “When played by Day-Lewis, Lincoln is controlled charisma, quiet power, (practically unassuming majesty). He just kind of lurks in the background being very small and quiet and controlled, and then suddenly, BAM! He’s Abraham Lincoln! (And he’s known it the entire time, but you just figured it out, so you’re still a little bit off balance, and he wins.) (I can imagine my stepson saying, “Aww! You just got told! You just got told by Abraham Lincoln!”).” Surely every actor working in English-language films today knows about Abraham Lincoln, but who else would have thought to play him this way? It certainly never occurred to me, yet the performance feels strangely authentic to all the historical accounts and anecdotes I’ve read about Lincoln now that I’ve seen it.
In particular, I love the moment when he dramatically emerges from beneath a blanket, taking everyone around him completely by surprise.
Abraham Lincoln is a difficult part, one that Day-Lewis refused initially because he didn’t want American audiences to turn on him if he failed. How do you play Lincoln and make it feel authentic and fresh all at once?
Day-Lewis pulled it off somehow, and he’s almost certainly going to make Oscar history on February 24.
Why He Might Not Win
Becoming the first person to win three Best Actor Oscars is a pretty big milestone, and that’s bound to give voters pause. (By my count, these four other living actors currently have two Best Actor Oscars: Tom Hanks, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson, Sean Penn. And then there are these guys who have multiple Oscars, but only one win for Best Actor: Robert DeNiro, Kevin Spacey, Gene Hackman. And what about all the marvelous actors out there—too many to name—who still don’t have even one Best Actor Oscar?)
Three Best Actor Oscars is a lot. Acting giants Marlon Brando and Spencer Tracy only had the opportunity to win two (though there’s speculation that Tracy would have won a third for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner had he not died before the ceremony).
Is Day-Lewis truly the man Academy voters want to honor with such an historic win? My guess is that the answer to that question will be a slow and thoughtful, “Yes.”
Day-Lewis is widely regarded as one of the greatest actors working today (some say, the greatest). Why everyone thinks so highly of him remains a mystery to me. (Don’t get me wrong. Day-Lewis is without question a great actor, but from “great” to “greatest” is quite a leap. I’m positive that Day-Lewis would never call himself the greatest living actor with so many heavy-hitters of acting still in the ring delivering heavy hits.
(Originally I was going to give specific examples, but my brain would only suggest “Robert DeNiro” over and over again, which probably explains the Raging Bullish boxing metaphor I eventually used instead.)
That’s the thing, though. Daniel Day-Lewis is the antithesis of self-aggrandizing. He’s polite, well-spoken, humble, and though it’s hard to call him grounded, he’s definitely eccentric in a harmless and rather charming way. When he won a SAG for playing Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood, he used a sizable portion of his speech to praise the late Heath Ledger. He’s about the farthest thing from an egomaniac to be found on the contemporary silver screen. By all appearances, he’s a lovely person, a gifted actor, and perhaps more convincing as our sixteenth president than even the actual Abraham Lincoln himself.
So basically, only the tremendous significance of the win (three Best Actor Oscars!) might stand between Day-Lewis and the Academy Award. Some voters might prefer to reward Hugh Jackman (who’s never won), or Denzel Washington (because he’s a great actor, too), or Joaquin Phoenix (to dispel the rumor that it’s more about Hollywood politics than the performance itself), or even Bradley Cooper (because if you’re just voting against Day-Lewis winning three Best Actor Oscars, then why not vote for Bradley Cooper? He’s nominated!).
But I still think Day-Lewis is going to win.
Hugh Jackman
Age: 44
Film: Les Misérables
Role: Jean Valjean, a Frenchman imprisoned for nineteen years for stealing bread to
feed a hungry child. When he leaves the prison on parole, Valjean is a hardened and desperate man, but a remarkable act of kindness by a benevolent bishop changes his life forever and sets him on a different course.
Nomination History:
This is Jackman’s first nomination.
Why He Should Win
Unlike everyone else I know, I never really liked Wolverine. (I would have preferred the first X-Men had it been titled Magneto and Picard Play Chess because I was never invested in any of the rest of them and couldn’t understand why they all kept stalking the adamantium loner who wasn’t exactly sending mixed messages about his desire for them all to get lost.)
My point is, I never realized how awesome Hugh Jackman is until he starred in Australia and then hosted the Oscars. Suddenly I realized I’d been confusing the actor with his screen persona. Hugh Jackman does not have an adamantium skeleton or mutant healing powers (that I know of, though he did look awfully robust at the Golden Globes for someone who claimed to be recovering from the flu). What Jackman does have is tremendous range, charisma, and talent. You don’t see too many action stars who also sing and dance. But you need a song-and-dance man with the brooding and physique of Wolverine if you plan to do what Tom Hooper did and make a film version of Les Mis that eschews pre-recorded vocal tracks and embraces realistic movement through the streets (and the sewers) of France.
Jean Valjean is a daunting character to take on, in some ways more challenging than even Abraham Lincoln since nobody remembers our sixteenth president in person, but plenty of people remember seeing Colm Wilkinson (who originated the role the role of Valjean in London and on Broadway) hitting those amazing high notes on the stage. The best songs in Les Misérables are all extremely difficult to sing well. (Just ask Russell Crowe.) In fact, it takes vocal training (and raw talent) just to sing them passably. And then in Hooper’s version, you’re not just standing in a sound-booth recording a track under ideal conditions. No, you’re running around like a maniac setting the pace of the song yourself as the cameras role. And while you’re singing, you’re also expected to be doing things like manual labor and body retrieval. Not just anyone would have the stamina to play the role of Jean Valjean according to Hooper’s specifications.
Jackman who trained hard to prepare for the role, not only rises to all of these physical challenges but also gives a moving (and presumably draining) interpretation of the character. Though his singing is far from weak, his acting is much stronger, and he makes Valjean—the character who must deliver larger-than-life, show-stopping musical numbers—a man the film audience can appreciate up close on screen. His performance is equal parts big musical numbers and small, nuanced acting.
Anne Hathaway is getting just praise and almost universal acclaim for her performance as Fantine. At the moment, she’s the clear front runner for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, and, while her performance is amazing, her actual screentime amounts to mere minutes. Jackman, on the other hand, sticks around for the whole two-and-a-half hour runtime and delivers a performance that is really just as good and for the same reasons (same passion, same strong singing, same raw emotion, same dedication to the character).
Just compare the Valjean who has first left prison, the Valjean who first meets Cosette, and the Valjean who brings home Marius to get an idea of the dramatic transformation the character makes when capably played by Jackman. We don’t have to be told that Valjean is a changed man. We can see the change for ourselves very clearly. That’s a testament to the power of Jackman’s performance.
Why He Might Not Win
Though he has a strong singing voice, Jackman privileges acting over singing. Instead of focusing on the beauty of the music, he concentrates on the meaning of the lyrics and sings in a way that feels true to the character’s emotions and situation. Clearly that’s what director Tom Hooper had in mind. Why else would he have filmed the cast singing live and let them control the pacing of their songs, adding in the full orchestration later?
Still, probably the biggest complaint people have about Jackman’s performance is that he doesn’t sing with the beauty of Colm Wilkinson (or any of the other stage Valjeans who typically incorporated a lot of heavenly falsetto that Jackman seems to have eschewed almost entirely). He’s not the only Les Mis actor to choose gritty over pretty. Almost all of them do it, and while Tom Hooper’s technique of letting them sing as they act is innovative for film, some people argue that the results aren’t anything that make the experiment worth repeating. For the record, I disagree. I personally cannot fathom a superior film production of Les Misérables, but some people definitely fault the movie for not being enough like the show. Others, of course, fault the movie for being too much like the show. The lesson is, Tom Hooper can’t win. (I mean, literally, he can’t because they didn’t nominate him for Best Director this year.) And Hooper’s failure to get a nomination for Best Director probably indicates that the film doesn’t have as much Academy support as its fans had hoped.
Because the role is so physically demanding (and no doubt draining), I would guess that Hugh Jackman has the best chance of any nominee to steal the Best Actor Oscar from Daniel Day-Lewis. But, realistically, that chance has got to be something like one in thirty-million. So the real reason Jackman probably won’t win is that Day-Lewis (already considered a great actor by most of Hollywood) blew everyone away with his marvelous performance as Abraham Lincoln. Hugh Jackman will probably continue to be the greater box office draw, however, regardless of the outcome.
Joaquin Phoenix
Age: 38
Film: The Master
Role: Freddie Quell, the Naval veteran who comes home from serving in World War II a broken man, unable to tame his darker impulses and uncertain of what to do with himself until he stumbles onto a yacht and meets a man named Lancaster Dodd, the charismatic leader of a mysterious movement called The Cause.
Nomination History:
Previously nominated for Best Actor for Walk the Line (2005).
Previously nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Gladiator (2001).
Why He Should Win
I’m the wrong person to be praising Phoenix’s performance in The Master. I’m not saying that I didn’t like it. But I keep hearing people say that Phoenix’s work here transcends the ordinary and elevates him to another level of acting that most will never achieve. I don’t
see that.
But I will say this. Ordinarily, I fail to connect with Paul Thomas Anderson’s films, and one reason is that I often find the central performances to be overdone for my tastes. I will allow that when Daniel Day-Lewis played Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood, you couldn’t take your eyes off the guy. But to me he seemed both over-the-top and overly mannered. (Obviously the Academy disagreed with me, and I mean no disrespect to Daniel Day-Lewis. I just never got what was so brilliant about the performance. Probably ten years from now, I’ll be drinking a milkshake and a light switch will come on, and I’ll totally get it, and There Will Be Blood will become my favorite movie. So watch
out person who’s drinking a milkshake beside me.)
Given the way I’ve failed to connect with P.T. Anderson movies in the past, I was pretty surprised when I absolutely loved The Master. But then I found out that many Anderson fans think the movie is one of his worst, and suddenly the world made sense again.
Now initially, I had the same problem with Phoenix’s Freddie Quell that I always seem to have with lead actors in P.T. Anderson’s films. He just didn’t seem like a real person to me. It was like he was playing a character out of a novel from the 1950s (not a person who happened to live in the 1950s, but a character from a novel, like he was Joaquin Phoenix doing a creative book report). Nothing he did seemed natural. Everything seemed like some trick he was trotting out for the camera. It was like Joaquin Phoenix couldn’t afford an expensive Halloween costume, so he decided to perform his costume and go trick-or-treating as Freddie Quell.
By the end of the movie, however, Phoenix won me over. Freddie evolved. Freddie changed. Gradually, the performance began to seem more natural, more believable, less distractingly like a performance. I stopped thinking about what Phoenix was doing and started seeing only Freddie.
Now here’s the thing, that kind of fluid transformation wouldn’t have been possible had he not started off as an extremely controlled character. I keep wanting to say he was “cramped” which doesn’t make much sense until you see the performance. Early on, Phoenix’s Freddie Quell is defined by being all squinched up, but gradually he eases up and spreads out to grow more organically.
So perhaps that is brilliant acting after all, but I do think that Denzel Washington does essentially the same thing in Flight but makes it look effortless so that you notice the difference but not until there is a difference to notice. You don’t start out thinking, Why is he all squinched up? That’s kind of distracting.
Joaquin Phoenix is a very good, actor, however. He’s quite versatile. He’s completely different here than he was as Johnny Cash in Walk the Line, Commodus in Gladiator, or even as a troubled child in Parenthood.
And maybe he will pull off an upset and win the Oscar this year because a number of people are extremely passionate about the strength of his performance. He is amazing in the intense processing scene aboard the yacht.
Why He Might Not
Phoenix doesn’t seem to want an Oscar. At least he keeps saying so. More than likely, he’s just being too genuine for his own good. What he says about campaigning for Oscars in his interview with Interview magazine really doesn’t sound so awful in its original context, and recently Oscar voters have started to seem a little smarter about not punishing artists for negative media spin. He did pull off a nomination, so maybe his comments on the process won’t hurt his chances. But if he doesn’t win, we’ll never know.
Lack of support for the film might hurt Phoenix’s chances, too. Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams all got acting nominations, but The Master wasn’t nominated for screenplay, director, or picture (despite that only nine of ten slots were filled). Some people find the plot too unfocused (or, to be a harsher, absent). Some find the not-so-thinly-veiled comparisons to Scientology unappealing. Some (me included) also think that Hoffman gives a far better and more natural performance than Phoenix.
And then, of course, there’s Daniel Day-Lewis. He’s probably the most sure argument against Phoenix winning. Phoenix could surprise us, though. A lot of people loved his performance.
Denzel Washington
Age: 58
Film: Flight
Role: Whip Whitaker, the remarkably gifted pilot who manages to land a defective and crashing plane with only three casualties. And he’s an alcoholic.
Nomination History:
Won Best Actor Oscar in 2002 for Training Day (2001).
Won Best Supporting Actor Oscar in Year for Glory (1989).
Previously nominated for Best Actor for Malcolm X (1992), The Hurricane (1999).
Previously nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Cry Freedom (1987).
Why He Should Win
Flight presents the audience with a strange dilemma. What’s more interesting, Denzel Washington or a plane crash? Ultimately Washington wins, and that’s why he’s nominated for Best Actor because anyone who has seen the movie will remember that the plane crash is amazing and intense. You’re still thinking about it long after it happens. In fact, you think about it for so long that it’s a cruel shock when you finally wake up and realize, Wait a minute! This movie isn’t about the plane crash. It’s not a disaster flick or a courtroom drama. This is a character study of an alcoholic. That’s a jarring realization about a bold move that some audience members refused to embrace.
I’ve heard lots of complaints about Flight’s bait-and-switch promotional tactics. Do Flight’s previews lead us to believe the movie will be a courtroom drama about a courageous (and possibly slandered) pilot? Yes. The previews are deliberately misleading. (Does Robert Zemeckis have any creative control over previews? I ask because I vividly remember how completely the trailer spoiled—and essentially ruined—his 2000 thriller What Lies Beneath. Maybe he doesn’t want that to happen again. Or maybe the studio just didn’t think people would show up for a film about alcoholism.)
Flight is basically Half-Nelson (remember that little 2006 drama? Ryan Gosling got a Best Actor nomination for playing a teacher/addict) or The Days of Wine and Roses or Leaving Las Vegas plus a really awesome plane crash. The plane crashes at terrifying speed very early in the movie. Then for the rest of the film we get to watch Washington’s character crash in equally terrifying slow motion.
Washington’s work in Flight is amazing. (It has to be because that plane crash is a tough act to follow.) He plays the role like two different men. Honestly, they could have achieved the same effect by hiring two actors to play Whip, one for the face he shows himself and one for the face he shows the world. In the film’s opening scene, Washington is sprawled naked across a bed, and everything about him is a sprawling mess. But in the next scene when he walks boldly onto the plane, he’s dressed to the nines and completely crisp, tucked in, orderly, confident, focused, and professional. At first I thought, Wow, he’s a totally different man when he’s sober.
But guess what? As he boards the plane, he’s not sober. And as the movie progresses, we slowly begin to realize that he’s almost never sober, and when he is, he’s a tormented, emotional wreck. How does Whip so often present himself as a consummate (and conceited) professional when inside he’s actually a big mess, always either high or suffering? A lesser actor couldn’t communicate this profound dilemma through entirely non-verbal cues the way Washington does.
Washington gives a great performance. If he didn’t, the audience would just stop watching because once that amazing plane crash is over, Whip’s inner journey is the whole show. Rarely these days does a great actor get the opportunity to carry an entire movie, and only a great actor like Washington can pull it off. He’s equally convincing as the tormented addict and the conceited ace pilot. These two characters inhabit the same body but make such different use of it. That’s why Washington is nominated for Best Actor.
Why He Might Not Win
Daniel Day-Lewis. That’s the biggest reason.
Like Day-Lewis, Washington is up for Oscar #3, but his first win for Glory was in Best Supporting Actor, which would make him the male Meryl Streep (in terms of wins) if he somehow upsets and gets a second Best Actor Oscar for Flight. (He would be the first African American actor to win three competitive Oscars for acting, but he’s already the record holder with two, so it’s not like his legacy is riding on this win.)
Simply because of Day-Lewis, I don’t think Washington can pull it off, but if you want more reasons, think of Hugh Jackman and Joaquin Phoenix. (Maybe even Bradley Cooper.) Best Actor is always a highly competitive category, and this year is no exception. John Hawkes gives a pretty amazing lead performance in The Sessions, and he didn’t even get nominated, basically because there just wasn’t room.
Washington gives a superlative performance. I’m sure it won’t be his last. If Day-Lewis does become the first person to win three Best Actor Oscars, Washington may eventually become the first person to win four.
But I don’t expect him to win this year.