411 Oscar Countdown 2010: Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress

Posted by Erik Luers on 03.04.2010

From Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds to Mo'Nique in Precious, 411's Jeremy Thomas brings you an in-depth look at all the nominees for Best Supporting Actor and Actress and gives you his picks on who will win!

With more locks than a prison cell, the Oscar race comes to an end this Sunday night at the Kodak Theater. Ten of the most celebrated and publicized group of people are found in the Best Actor and Actress in a Supporting Role categories. Ranging from young newcomers (a twenty-four year old Anna Kendrick) to old newcomers (Christopher Plummer, eighty years of age), this group of actors and performances are quite a diverse group. Anyone could win, of course, but you wouldn't know it by following the onslaught of glitzy award shows this current winter season. Two names have been consistent: Christoph Waltz and Monique. To say their backgrounds are vastly different would be an understatement. One came primarily from television (and some film), and the other from stand-up comedy and raunchy satires. One is in a film from Quentin Tarantino, the other from Lee Daniels. Comparing the two films is like comparing apples and oranges, but both can taste good (for the record, I prefer the inglorious apples) when the time comes. But does anyone else have a shot at Oscar glory? Should the eight other nominees even bother to show up to the ceremony (they get free swag, or so I hear)? Of course. If nothing else, four other female nominees will get to walk the red carpet in their nice dresses (five, if Harrelson attempts a To Wong Foo homage) and take in their moment in the spotlight. Some will be nominated again, some won't.

One nominee, Penelope Cruz, just won in this category last year, becoming the first Spanish-born actress to ever win an Academy Award. If she wins again, she'll be the seventeenth person to win two Academy Awards within a five year period. Beat that Vanessa Redgrave! Cruz's role in Vicky Cristina Barcelona was, for the most, in Spanish, making her the seventh person to win an Academy Award for giving a performance in a primarily non-English speaking role. If Christoph Waltz wins, he'll be the eighth. Expect this to happen....or don't. Oh, and If Christopher Plummer were to win, he'd become the oldest actor to ever be awarded the gold (beating George Burns by a mere fifteen days). Oh Christopher, you Devil. But enough trivia! Who will win? Jeremy Thomas lets us know. It may all prove to be up in the air. -Erik Luers


Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
By Jeremy Thomas

Matt Damon for Invictus



Previous Oscar Nominations for Acting: 1 - Good Will Hunting

The Best Supporting Actor category is one where being a big-name star can sometimes be a hindrance; so-called "A-List" actors like Robert Downey Jr., Alec Baldwin, Mark Wahlberg and Eddie Murphy have been denied in this category in recent years in favor of lesser-known names such as Javier Bardem, Alan Arkin, Chris Cooper and Jim Broadbent. At the same time George Clooney and Morgan Freeman have taken home the award in the last decade, which could spell good things for Matt Damon. Damon's performance in Invictus as François Pienaar shows the star's skill as a character actor. He sinks into the role of the rugby great with surprising ease, handling the tricky Afrikaner accent without a hitch and looking like a pro in the rugby scenes. Acting opposite the Best Actor nominee in Morgan Freeman, Damon holds his own and anchors the sports aspect of the movie very nicely. Damon has previous Oscar cred with a Best Leading Actor nomination from Good Will Hunting, as well as a Best Original Screenplay win alongside Ben Affleck. In some cases this can be a hindrance, but in Damon's case it has been long enough that it doesn't stand to hurt his chances. In fact, it may give him a boost since he didn't win on the acting front and some voters may think that he's due. The actor may be a long shot to win here based on the strength of his fellow performances, but it is certainly a performance—and an actor—worthy of recognition.



Woody Harrelson for The Messenger



Previous Oscar Nominations for Acting: 1 - The People vs. Larry Flynt

It may surprise some that of the Best Supporting Actors, one of the only two men with a previous Academy Award nomination is the guy who has films like White Men Can't Jump, She Hate Me, The Cowboy Way and 2012 to his credit. For every bad film however, Woody Harrelson has an excellent role in a very good movie. Not all of them are well-known films; many remember Harrelson's work in Natural-Born Killers or his Oscar-nominated performance as the titular character in The People vs. Larry Flynt, but not nearly as many know about his performances in A Scanner Darkly or Transsiberian. Harrelson has once again scored an acclaimed performance in a little-known film, playing the partner of Ben Foster's Will Montgomery, delivering bad news to the just-widowed wives of soldiers. As Captain Tony Stone, Harrelson has the showier role, playing a man who is masking the pain of performing his job and personal demons under bravado and wild behavior off the job. This doesn't make it any less of a masterful job however, as the actor captures the essence of the character perfectly. Harrelson has picked up a few wins for this one, including the National Board of Review award for Best Supporting Actor and earning nominations in several others. While his film may not be the best-known of the five films nominated here and others have had more awards, this year could definitely be the year Harrelson picks up the Oscar he failed to win fourteen years ago.



Christopher Plummer for The Last Station



Previous Oscar Nominations for Acting: None

Of all the actors nominated for Best Supporting Actor this year, none have had the long and distinguished career that Christopher Plummer has. The venerable actor has starred in almost 160 films in his fifty-two year career and played some of the all-time great characters from Hamlet to Ralph Nickleby to Abraham Van Helsing (admittedly, the latter in a less-than-classic film, Dracula 2000).. In The Last Station, Plummer has given what many are calling the performance of his career as the famed Russian author Leo Tolstoy. Plummer is a classic actor who has never been honored or even nominated by the Academy, and many might see this as an opportunity to award Plummer for his career as a whole the way some actors have been in the past. The big question is whether enough of the voting academy has seen The Last Station, which got an extremely limited run before December ended in order to make it eligible. Plummer's performance may not have the flair and panache that Christoph Waltz's does or the opportunity for creepy relish that Stanley Tucci was able to sink his teeth into, and as such the actor has to be considered a long shot. However, when it comes to the Oscars, never count out the old, respected thespian.



Stanley Tucci for The Lovely Bones



Previous Oscar Nominations for Acting: None

Stanley Tucci may just be the man who has quietly delivered the most consistently impressive work while still staying well under the radar of awards season. Tucci's work has been quite good in every endeavor he's taken on, from critically-lauded films like Julie & Julia, The Devil Wears Prada Road to Perdition and The Terminal to even lower-quality films overall such as Swing Vote and Maid in Manhattan. He's never been up for an Academy Award however, until this year. As serial killer George Harvey, Tucci caught the attention of critics and movie-goers alike, turning in a performance that was very different than his usual cultured, white-collar types. For those who remember his work as Khamel in The Pelican Brief, it is not quite so surprising; either way there's no doubt that Tucci's performance was disturbing and mesmerizing. Able to turn his charm into menace with a slight shift of his expression, the actor created one of the more memorable villains of the year and someone who helped make the movie as good as it was. Unfortunately, Tucci's odds are definitely hurt by the fact that The Lovely Bones didn't seem to catch on with everyone, being a divisive film overall and scoring in mediocre levels overall. Tucci may have a lift by the fact that some feel he was passed over for his performance in The Devil Wears Prada, but will it be enough to nab him an award? It's a very steep field he's playing against, though one would be foolish to count him totally out of the running.



Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds



Previous Oscar Nominations for Acting: None

It's rare that an actor finds himself an Oscar front-runner in his first major English-speaking film role, but that is exactly the position that Christoph Waltz finds himself in. The fifty-three year-old actor has earned more than a few accolades in his native country of Germany, but he was little-known to American audiences until he was cast by Quentin Tarantino as the villainous Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds. Landa is known as "The Jew Hunter" in the film, and is renowned for his ability to ferret out Jewish people hiding from the Third Reich; when he comes across the Basterds he has an impeccable plan to defeat them. Well…almost impeccable. Waltz embodied the role with so much energy, so much menace and so much flair that the weekend of the film's release, critics and audiences were predicting Oscar nominations, and obviously those predictions came true. First-time nominations can be tricky with the Academy Awards; often times the Academy can decide to honor someone who has been nominated before but denied. In Waltz's case on the other hand, the momentum is clearly on his side. Waltz has scored twenty-six awards for Best Supporting Actor this year, including every Critic's Award, the Golden Globe, the BAFTA, the Satellite Award and the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor earlier in the year. Every award Waltz has been up for he has won to date, and that makes his win here a virtual certainty. Of course, one must always be careful of the chance that Oscar voters will decide to buck the trend and go their own way; it's happened more than once. However, at this point the smart money has to be on Waltz to pick up the big win come Oscar night.





AND THE (PREDICTED) WINNER IS… Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds






Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
By Jeremy Thomas



Penélope Cruz for Nine



Previous Oscar Nominations for Acting: 2 - Volver, Vicky Cristina Barcelona (WON)

In this field of newcomers to the Academy Awards, the lovely and talented Penélope Cruz can be considered a veteran. She's been nominated twice, and won her first award in this very category last year for her work as the emotionally unstable Maria Elena in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona. In that film she was the ex-wife of the man wooing a younger woman; this year she's been nominated for her role as Carla Albanese, in which she plays the flip-side of a love triangle as the other woman. Cruz has always shown herself to be a versatile actress and one might easily consider her to be a threat to the first person ever to win back to back Supporting Actress Awards. Her performance was certainly one of the best things about Nine; the only thing holding her back is that like Stanley Tucci with The Lovely Bones, audience and critical reaction was generally negative and nominees rarely pick up wins when their films are not well-liked, no matter how good the performances are. Some may feel that the film's failure at capturing the magic of 8 ½, upon which the musical is based, means that it shouldn't be honored at all. The fact that she did win just last year certainly hurts her chances as well. Still, she is never an actress one can count out, especially in the last few years and she could well pull off a major upset here to claim the award and make Oscar history.



Vera Farmiga for Up in the Air



Previous Oscar Nominations for Acting: None

In Up in the Air, George Clooney's "transition counselor" Ryan Bingham meets his match in a woman who's style, apparent attitudes toward relationships and penchant for frequent flyer miles equals his own. That woman is Alex Goran, as played by Vera Farmiga and the character has earned the actress her first Academy Award nomination. Farmiga has been quietly building a solid resume over the last several years with roles in films like The Departed, Orphan, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and Nothing But the Truth. Those last two films earned Farmiga an award and a nomination, respectively, among critics associations. It is as Alex Goran though that she has finally found the recognition her performances have deserved. She earned a score of nominations from the various Critics Circles in this category and won the Vancouver Film Critics Circle Award. Farmiga's performance is one that could easily end up unsympathetic by the end of the film, but the actress puts her heart into the film and makes the audience like her even after a surprising and unpleasant reveal. It is the kind of low-key yet skillful performance that the Academy loves to reward, particularly in the way that she meets Clooney blow for blow and frequent flyer mile-for-frequent flyer mile. However, she does have one major thing going against her, and that is a certain young actress who shares screen time with her in the film. Anna Kendrick could very easily split votes away from Farmiga from voters who want to honor the film but differ on which actress to do so on, and that could easily cost both actresses the Oscar. If this doesn't happen though, it is very possible one of the two could come up big on Oscar night, and that one could very easily be Farmiga, who has the most respected body of work behind her of all the nominees save Cruz.



Maggie Gyllenhaal for Crazy Heart



Previous Oscar Nominations for Acting: None

Among the Academy Awards, the Best Supporting Actress category is the most well-known for surprise wins and upsets. Many consider Kim Basinger's win in 1997 for L.A. Confidential to be a major upset over the venerable Gloria Stuart for Titanic; Mira Sorvino raised some eyebrows when she won in 1995 for Mighty Aphrodite over Joan Allen and Kathleen Quinlan. One of the most infamous surprise upsets in Oscar history happened with Marisa Tomei took home the award for her role as Mona Lisa Vito in My Cousin Vinny; the win over more respected actresses such as Vanessa Redgrave, Judy Davis and Miranda Richardson spurred an urban legend (proven false) that presenter Jack Palance read the winner card wrong and the Academy refused to go back on it. This year's surprise nomination could follow in those footsteps, as Maggie Gyllenhaal contends for the award thanks to her work as Jean Craddock, the young journalist who finds Bad Blake and sets out to interview him with the hopes of making her career. She ends up getting more than she bargained for and the results make for a great film. Gyllenhaal has been honored with awards before, though never an Oscar; she earned acclaim and notice for her role as Lee Holloway in Secretary, then was nominated for a Golden Globe for Sherrybaby. This is her first time at the big dance however. While the award does have its share of upsets, one has to believe that Gyllenhaal's odds are not helped by the fact that she has gotten no attention—not even nominations—from any other award set, save for a single nomination from the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association. Many also consider her performance, although good, to be the weakest of the five. Her odds at taking home the golden man come Sunday may not be the strongest, but at the very least Gyllenhaal has made a strong point that she is an actress to take a bit more seriously from this point forward.



Anna Kendrick for Up in the Air



Previous Oscar Nominations for Acting: None

Every now and then, Oscar is host to a sudden breakout star. In 2010's case, nowhere is that more prevalent than Anna Kendrick. The twenty-four year old actress has been known to most of America only as Jessica, the friend of Kristen Stewart's Bella in the Twilight Saga. Indeed, she had only appeared in five films before Up in the Air bowed in December, and only the Twilight films had been seen in more than 115 theaters. Thus, it was a startling revelation when Kendrick took on the role of downsizing hotshot Natalie Keener, whose ideas threaten to destroy Ryan Bingham's world and force him to take her around the country so she can learn how the business really works. Kendrick's performance has been mentioned hand-in-hand with that of her co-star and fellow nominee Vera Farmiga; few have noticed that she has actually done better in the award season, with a handful of award wins among the various Critics Circles as well as the National Board of Review. It is perhaps not surprising, as the young actress's character makes a much more striking transformation from the beginning of the film to the end. Of course, she has the same difficulty as her co-star in that the two may split votes, which certainly diminishes her chances. Still, the fact remains that of all the actresses in the category, Kendrick has done the best in terms of wins with the exception of Mo'Nique. If anyone has a chance of taking the award away from the front-runner, it may well be Kendrick which will give her the chance to put the stigma of being just another Twilight star behind her.



Mo'Nique for Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire



Previous Oscar Nominations for Acting: None

Of all the nominees for Best Supporting Actress, no one may be a bigger surprise based on their previous films as Mo'Nique. Before taking on the role of Mary Jones in Precious, the comedienne has been best-known for such films as Beerfest, Soul Plane, Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins and Phat Girls…hardly a resume one may expect to see in the indisputable front-runner for an Academy Award. Still, Mo'Nique took audiences by storm and captivated them as the viciously abusive, highly dysfunctional mother of Gabourey Sidibe's lead character. Few thought the actress was capable of such a role, and she has been described as "frighteningly convincing" and a performance that "tears at your heart," and to be frank those descriptions don't quite do her work justice. It's the kind of performance that an actress gives once, maybe twice in their life, and there is little doubt that the voting Academy will want to reward her for it. She has already dominated the award season up to this point by winning eighteen awards including the Golden Globe, the BAFTA, the Satellite Award and the vast majority of the Critics Circle awards (her only non-win for which she was nominated, the Toronto Film Critics Association, was won by Kendrick). Still, her win is not quite a lock. There is always the possibility that her less-than-spectacular resume will work against her; the Academy can be notoriously stuffy. Also, as mentioned before the Academy does love its upsets in this category and one of the other nominees could strike it big at the front-runner's expense. Still, the stars seem in complete alignment for the actress and it would take a fool or a major risk-taker to bet against Mo'Nique walking home with a golden statue come Sunday night.






AND THE (PREDICTED) WINNER IS… Mo'Nique, Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire



Tune in this Sunday, March 7th to see who will be victorious!