Amy Adams
Age: 38
Film: The Master
Role: Peggy, the devoted (and controlling) wife of charismatic, up-and-coming cult leader Lancaster Dodd, the thinly veiled fictional equivalent of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.
Nomination History:
Previously nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Junebug (2005), Doubt (2008), and The Fighter (2010).
Why She Should Win
People persist in the delusion that Amy Adams plays the same character all the time even though her past Oscar nominations tell a different story. True, the painfully cheerful, sweetly tragic Ashley from Junebug has inexperience and a gentle spirit in common with Doubt’s Sister James, but no one could confuse the two young women. (The pregnancy and the habit help us keep them straight if nothing else). And foul-mouthed, tough-as-nails Charlene from The Fighter was a dramatic departure from Adams’s usual bubbly screen persona. (Melissa Leo had a showier part in that movie, but I actually think Amy Adams gave the superior performance.)
This year Adams has made another dramatic departure from the screen persona that made her a star. In The Master, she plays something that she’s never played before but really should have stumbled on much sooner—creepy.
Nobody can pull off creepy like someone who appears to be a wide-eyed innocent. That’s why there are so many horror films featuring eerie children and living dolls. Creepy is just one small, unexpected deviation away from sweet.
What’s more insidious than someone torturing you with a kind smile? Harry Potter’s Dolores Umbridge is definitely on this path, but Amy Adams’s Peggy Dodd is much further down it. Umbridge’s sweetness is put on for show, but Peggy’s is genuine. She’s not sweetness affected, she’s sweetness perverted. She looks sweet. She acts sweet. She ought to be sweet. But she isn’t. And by the time you know that for sure, you’ve gotten too close, and she’s trapped you.
As played by Adams, Peggy Dodd is the girl-next-door who never left the house because her parents started a cult and had all the children busily participating in the ceremony when her father ritually sacrificed her mother on the dining room table and buried her in the basement. And now she runs that cult with ruthless efficiency.
When Adams is onscreen playing Peggy, you can’t look away from her even though you don’t like what you see. Her lines tell us one story, but her face as she delivers them tells us far more and hints at some things that we’re uncomfortably sure that we never wanted to know. She’s great in her first chat with Freddy Quell aboard the ship and also very strong in the dinner scene, when the family approaches Dodd with concerns about Freddy.
It would be easy to play this character wrong, to mess up and make Peggy shrill or overbearing or phony. But Adams plays her just right and pulls off a tricky type of character that she’s never tackled before.
All of her nominations have been deserving. She’s a very talented actress who ought to win an Oscar soon, maybe even this year.
Why She Might Not Win
Who doesn’t love The Master? The answer is, most people. Some complain that it disrespects Scientology. More complain that it doesn’t. Many devoted P.T. Anderson fans find The Master easily his weakest film with an unfocused narrative, unsatisfying character arcs, and a message that just isn’t as profound as it ought to be. Critics in general have noticed that the characters are all more interesting than anything that happens to them, and that for a movie in which nothing really happens, the nothing certainly does eat up a lot of screentime.
Another problematic element—apparently in an earlier version of the script (possibly even an earlier cut of the film), Adams played Mary Sue Dodd. And then (some say after the film was screened for Tom Cruise) the character’s name was changed to Peggy, so she would not have such an obvious connection to Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s actual wife, Mary Sue. Some vocal people find off-putting the fact that the character is clearly based (without authorization) on such a controversial figure, especially given the lurid nature of a couple of her more surreal scenes that occur mid-movie.
Amy Adams can’t help the fact that the character brings a lot of (unsavory) baggage, but all of these factors do hurt her Oscar chances. Also, the same people who complain that Amy Adams plays the same character in every movie might reasonably protest that here she’s merely playing the nightmare version of her usual screen persona.
What really hurts her chances, though, are the exceptional performances of Anne Hathaway and Sally Field. If Adams does win the Oscar, it will be a definite (though not undeserved) upset.
Sally Field
Age: 66
Film: Lincoln
Role: Mary Todd, the much maligned and notoriously unstable wife of beloved sixteenth U.S. president Abraham Lincoln. While her husband spends the movie (and unbeknownst to him, the final days of his life) preoccupied with passing the Thirteenth Amendment and putting a permanent end to slavery in the United States, Mary Todd still mourns for her recently deceased young son and worries about the safety of her remaining children and her husband.
Nomination History:
Won Best Actress Oscar in 1980 for Norma Rae (1979).
Won Best Actress Oscar in 1985 for Places in the Heart (1984).
Why She Should Win
Every time Sally Field has been nominated for an Oscar, she’s won. That bit of trivia should give us pause. At things stand, Anne Hathaway is certainly the Supporting Actress to beat, but if anybody can pull off an upset, it’s Sally Field.
As someone obsessed with Sybil (and abnormal psychology in general) in seventh grade, I have been a fan of Sally Field for a long time. She’s a very gifted actress with an accommodating physique that gives her even more amazing range than her considerable talent. She’s played Tom Hanks’s love interest and his mother (and not in a production of Oedpius Rex!). For the longest time, she could show up in the movie as anyone from the ingénue to the old maiden aunt and deliver a performance that felt totally authentic. At sixty-six, Field’s finally gotten a bit old to play the ingénue, but not too old to play Mary Todd Lincoln, who was forty-six back in 1865 when the movie takes place.
Back when I first heard that Sally Field was cast, I thought immediately, Of course! Mary Todd was crazy, and she plays crazy so well. She’s an obvious choice. But apparently, she didn’t seem so obvious to the filmmakers. Twenty years older than her character, and ten years older than Daniel Day-Lewis, Field had to campaign hard to convince Spielberg and the others that she was right for the part. And then—in a turn that came as a great surprise to me—when she played the role, she didn’t make Mary Todd seem crazy at all. On the contrary, as played by Field, Mary Todd seems like an ordinary woman struggling to live through extraordinary circumstances. What’s more, while watching the movie, I never once noticed how much older the actress was than her character and her co-star (and I’m aware that she starred in Gidget and The Flying Nun back in the sixties).
In a very serious, stately film (with a very serious, stately pace), Field interjects a welcome warmth and wit as Mary Todd, an utterly human character who quickly wins the sympathy of the audience. She’s charming, and I loved her battle of words and wits with Tommy Lee Jones. At moments, of course, Field seems to break the fourth wall (as when she seems to laugh along with the audience in the carriage scene), but she’s so entertaining when she does that I can’t fault her for it.
Field is a very talented, skilled and versatile veteran, and if she wins for playing Mrs. Lincoln, she’ll completely deserve it.
Why She Might Not Win
If not for Anne Hathaway’s stunning turn as Fantine, Field would win easily. Really, it’s a shame the Academy cannot reward both performances. (I’m aware that exact ties are technically possible, but they happen so rarely.) Right now, Hathaway has more momentum, and unlike Field, she’s never won before, so I (like many others) give Anne the
edge.
Anne Hathaway
Age: 30
Film: Les Misérables
Role: Fatine, a tragic single mother who through a series of cruel misfortunes, loses everything—her innocence, her lover, her job, her dignity, her health, her teeth—except her voice. Falsely accused and terminally ill, Fantine makes a great case in song for being considered most wretched of all les miserables and seems likely to die in despair when Jean Valjean suddenly intervenes and by promising to rescue her child Cosette allows her the luxury of moving past her despair and simply dying.
Nomination History:
Previously nominated for Best Actress for Rachel Getting Married (2008).
Why She Should Win
The youngest Supporting Actress nominee this year, Anne Hathaway sacrificed a lot to do this role justice—just ask her. She cut her hair. She crash dieted. She insisted on sending the stunt woman away so that she could play dead while being thrown out the window into a cart. (And that scene didn’t even make the movie!) For the love of all that is holy, she ate raw oatmeal! Raw oatmeal!
Some critics have complained that Les Misérables is melodramatic and takes itself ridiculously seriously. So who better for the role of Fantine than an actress who approaches the part with exactly the same sense of self-importance and melodrama?
I’m serious. It’s easy to laugh at Anne Hathaway (even though I love her), but when you’re watching her performance in Les Misérables, you never laugh at Fantine. There’s no irony in the performance at all, no cool detachment, no distance, no movie-star preening for the camera. Anne Hathaway treats her character with sympathetic respect, the way she treats everyone. Yes Hathaway is a very enthusiastic person, but that makes her perfect for a leading role in Les Misérables. Would you want an actress who announced with an eye roll, “Yeah, so I was cast as this pathetic, dirty loser in some melodramatic musical or whatever”? (That would have been her former Oscars co-host James Franco. If Franco were cast, everyone would be singing “Lovely Ladies” and Fantine would be over in the corner updating her twitter feed with jokes made at their expense.)
Hathaway’s mother played Fantine in a touring version of Les Mis, so she’s more than just a casual fan of the musical. She took the part and committed to it because she wanted to do justice to the character. Did she really have to cut her hair and choke down all that oatmeal? Did she really have to let them throw her out the window?
No, but don’t tell her that. Anne Hathaway keeps saying that she put herself through this torture because she wants to be a great actress but doesn’t have the talent and so must rely on craft and put in extra work. Of course, these self-deprecating, ingratiating comments are not true, but please nobody let Anne Hathaway in on this secret because whatever she is doing, it’s working! You can see the results on the screen. Despite her laudable professionalism, commendable work ethic, and increasingly bizarre modesty, the results she’s getting are probably mostly due to her talent.
I could shave my head, jump out every window I see, and eat nothing but raw oatmeal for a year, and I’d still be unable to perform the vocally demanding role of Fantine with the passion, power, and raw vulnerability Hathaway brings to the part.
A few years back, I remember Lindsay Lohan (a very talented child actress) passionately describing the difficulty of playing a horribly maimed character in I Know Who Killed Me and saying that she knew that she had to push herself to do things that made her uncomfortable for the sake of artistic integrity. Needless to say, she did not receive an Oscar nomination for her performance. Actors don’t win awards based on how dramatically they describe the uncomfortable filming. They win because of how good they are in the movie, and Hathaway is fantastic. Her Fantine is the best part of Les Misérables. I haven’t seen such passion conveyed through song since Jennifer Hudson’s show stopping performance of “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” in Dream Girls.
Another reason actors win awards is that people in the industry like them, and Anne Hathaway (who treats everyone with respect and goes overboard being nice) appears to be universally well liked (except maybe by the stunt woman who thought she had landed the job of being thrown out the window, but I haven’t asked the stunt woman. I’m just guessing on that one, and maybe Anne Hathaway’s hugging her to death somewhere right now, and they’re totally best friends).
Yet another thing in Hathaway’s favor is her dedication to her craft. This performance isn’t some lucky fluke. She became famous for playing Mia Thermopolis in The Princess Diaries in 2001, and even when I saw her as late as 2006 in The Devil Wears Prada, I thought she was one of the weaker actresses in the film because I assumed that she was just playing herself. Not until re-watching the film after seeing some of Hathaway’s later work did I realize that she was not playing herself at all. She had just been typecast for so long. She’s really a remarkable actress who was able to move past her Disney image by remaining clear-headed, choosing good roles that would improve her as an artist, and fighting for them. She approaches every job with professionalism, does her homework, and speaks of older (and in her estimation greater) actresses with nothing but admiration (approaching reverence).
By the way, joking aside, dry oats dehydrate you by soaking up available liquid in your body, so eating raw oats without drinking lots of water is a real health risk. And Hathaway’s refusal to disclose all her other unhealthy weight loss secrets because she doesn’t want to help women starve themselves is a responsible (though dramatic) stance.
Why She Might Not Win
I think Anne Hathaway will win the Oscar, but I can see why she’s nervous, and I don’t think that part is false modesty. It’s just good sense. Front runners lose all the time, especially in Best Supporting Actress, the category that’s always teeming with crazy surprises!
Hathaway’s performance is remarkable and essentially perfect. Her singing voice is strong. Her acting is moving. Her dedication to the role is total. Even most people who disliked the movie (even many people who volunteer that they dislike her!) agree that Anne Hathaway is amazing as Fantine. Love or hate Les Misérables, Anne Hathaway’s performance is one of the best parts of the movie.
But Sally Field’s performance is one of the best parts of Lincoln, too, and she’s been in the business for a long time. Just like Hathaway, Field has won her share of critics’ prizes this year, and she’s a serious contender for the Oscar. And because this is the Academy Awards we are talking about, and there are at least two serious contenders, a split vote and surprise win by some other lucky lady is always possible as well.
Helen Hunt
Age: 49
Film: The Sessions
Role: Cheryl, the sex-positive surrogate who helps disabled protagonist Mark O’Brien experience physical intimacy and achieve intercourse for the first time in his life while she struggles with ongoing issues of her own.
Nomination History:
Won Best Actress Oscar in 1998 for As Good as it Gets (1997).
Why She Should Win
Like Sally Field, Helen Hunt has won every time she’s been nominated, but since she’s only been nominated once, that’s not quite as significant in her case. Clearly (given her long absence from mainstream movies) Hunt is very selective about the roles she actually
takes on, and I could see why she would think that Cheryl is something special.
For one thing, Cheryl Cohen Greene is a real person who is still alive and working in an industry that many people have never even heard of, sex surrogacy. Though patients pay the surrogate, and she usually has sex with them, Cheryl’s profession is perfectly legal and not the same thing as prostitution because she is a licensed therapist. As I write this, I realize that the whole thing sounds sort of sketchy—especially because Cheryl has a thick Bostonian accent, and a flood of movies by Ben Affleck and Mark Wahlberg have trained us to think Bostonians are always up to something. But watch the movie. Nothing about it is sleazy or even tawdry, I promise.
In fact, Mark is an exceptionally sweet and sincere man acting under the guidance of an incredibly understanding Roman Catholic priest. And Cheryl truly wants to help people appreciate what a gift their sexuality is. She is a sex surrogate because she wants to help her patients take ownership of their own sexuality and feel positive about their bodies.
I learned a lot from watching The Sessions, based on a true story by the late Mark O’Brien, a poet and journalist who contracted polio as a child in 1955 and spent most of his life virtually paralyzed, most of his day inside an iron lung.
(From the film, we learn that Mark is not technically paralyzed. His muscles are just extremely weak.) With the help of assistants who push his prone and twisted body on a gurney, Mark is able to leave the iron lung for a few hours at a time to attend classes at Berkely, research articles, and get some sunshine. John Hawkes should have gotten a Best Actor nomination for his superlative performance in a difficult and demanding role, but he didn’t.
I suspect that Hunt pulled off a nomination when her co-star couldn’t for three reasons. 1) She spends most of her scenes nonchalantly naked, and she looks great (and not just for a forty-nine-year-old. For anybody.) People keep calling her nudity “courageous.” Not when you look like that, it’s not! With a body like that, it takes far more courage to leave your clothes on, basically the equivalent of the Green Lantern agreeing to fight without using his ring. 2) Cheryl is given an extremely beautiful character arc of her own. I don’t want to spoil the film, but her scene with Rhea Perlman is surprisingly moving, and I found it just as powerful (and in some ways more satisfying) than the conclusion of Mark’s journey. 3) Supporting Actress isn’t as full as Best Actor where six deserving contenders had to fill just five slots.
As a whole, the film leaves you with a lovely feeling. I would never have guessed that a movie about a sex surrogate and a guy in an iron lung would be so uplifting, entertaining, and positive. Not only is the film sex-positive, but it also portrays religion in an unusually positive light. The movie’s various religious figures actually seem to want to help people as the representatives of a God who loves us. That’s not usually what you get when movies take on religion.
Why She Might Not Win
If Jennifer Lawrence is nominated for lead actress, why is Helen Hunt in supporting? As Supporting Actresses go, Hunt gets far more screen time and character development than any of her competitors this year.
At heart, Silver Linings Playbook and The Sessions are both atypical romantic comedies about a man with special challenges who attempts to navigate a relationship. Romantic comedies require the participation of two people, not just one.
The whole focus of Mark and Cheryl’s work together is learning to have sex. That’s the whole point of the movie. Mark wants to have sex. And a movie about a sexual relationship that involves only one person does not exactly sound enchanting. (I tried so many great one-liners here, but ultimately decided they were all too crude.)
The point is, Cheryl is Mark’s partner in bed and on screen. Helen Hunt is really the lead actress in The Sessions, so it’s not fair for her to be nominated the supporting category. (Fair shmair, of course. People win this way all the time.)
Another slight complication is that some people view the real life Cheryl Cohen Greene as—how to put this politely?—a nymphomaniac who deludes herself into thinking she does it for people’s psychological well-being. The Sessions offers us a gift, but it can’t force us to accept it, and cynics are going to conclude that the movie portrays sex surrogacy and religion in such a positive and cooperative light that it must be reimagining the truth a
bit.
Jacki Weaver
Age: 65
Film: Silver Linings Playbook
Role: Dolores Solitano, the uneasy mother who checks her bipolar son out of a mental hospital against doctor’s orders, so he can recover from an episode at home where she (and his OCD father) can keep an eye on him and (hopefully) prevent him from pursuing his estranged wife in violation of her restraining order.
Nomination History:
Previously nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Animal Kingdom (2010).
Why She Should Win
I’m stunned (but pleased) that Jacki Weaver managed to get nominated for this role because Dolores doesn’t do anything showy. She doesn’t get any grand-standing dramatic monologues or show-stopping musical numbers. She never does anything scintillating like play an entire scene completely nude or give her husband a hand while lecturing him in a parental tone about his beastly urges. Most of what she does is subtle, unspoken, and highly effective. As I said in my review of Silver Linings Playbook, “Her best moments are all non-verbal, and those wounded/worried/loving stares of hers were so convincing that I left the theater with the vague impulse to buy my mother flowers and take her out to dinner to apologize for something I can’t quite remember.”
Weaver’s really good in this movie and makes a lot out of an underwritten role. Perhaps Academy members were impressed because she plays a character so radically different here from the cold, calculating, conniving, (potentially) sociopathic Smurf from Animal Kingdom.
Perhaps, too, she’s nominated simply because voters actually saw the movie and liked it. Her nomination shows that Silver Linings Playbook has a lot of support and possibly even a shot at winning Best Picture (which I never would have predicted in a million years despite my love of the film and the director).
If she somehow pulls off a win, it will be a huge shock since all the other actresses nominated have showier parts. Even though Anne Hathaway is only in Les Mis for a few minutes, the spotlight is on her the entire time she’s there. Jacki Weaver, on the other hand, mainly hangs around in the background, preparing food, making phone calls, and watching nervously.
Still I’m really glad that Weaver continues to get recognition. Since I’ve never lived in Australia, I was unfamiliar with her work until Animal Kingdom, but I really loved her in The Five-Year Engagement last spring and now realize she’s equally proficient in comedy and drama.
Why She Might Not Win
To me, Weaver seems to be the candidate with the least chance of winning. Her nomination was certainly the one genuine surprise in the category. I’d heard people suggest Ann Dowd, Maggie Smith, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, even Juno Temple. I don’t remember anybody mentioning Weaver’s name until the nominations were announced. (I’m sure someone somewhere predicted her, but most people didn’t.) For the movie’s sake and because she did give a great performance, I’m glad Weaver was nominated, but a win for her over the other four would probably be the biggest shock of the night. At the Oscars, though (and particularly in Supporting Actress), anything is possible!