By Erik Beck of Nighthawk News.
The Nominees:
Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)
George Clooney (Up in the Air)
Colin Firth (A Single Man)
Morgan Freeman (Invictus)
Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker)
The Nominees History:
Jeff Bridges (b.1949):
Four times a best man, never a Best Actor. Bridges, of course, grew up in the industry and his four nominations are the entirety of a family that has a combined 130 years of film acting between them. He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for The Last Picture Show in 1971 but lost to his co-star Ben Johnson. He was nominated again for a mostly forgotten film, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot in 1974, losing this time to Robert De Niro. His third nomination and only lead was for Starman in 1984, this time losing to F. Murray Abraham in Amadeus. His most recent nomination was for playing the President who nominated Joan Allen as his Vice-President in The Contender in 2000, but he lost that time to Benicio Del Toro. He was Golden Globe nominated for The Fisher King but lost out on the Oscar nomination. His reputation has grown over the last decade with the cult embracing of his role in The Big Lebowski, on my list of one of the 100 Greatest Films to Not Receive Any Academy Award Nominations. He is widely considered a nice guy in Hollywood and most of the industry seems to be pulling for him.
George Clooney (b. 1961)
Clooney has established himself as one of the best guys around, most recently with the Haiti Telethon, but that was a natural extension of other charity work he has done. He became a star on E.R. before moving into films, first as a big failure as Batman, but then bouncing back with his critically acclaimed work in Out of Sight. He was acclaimed again for Three Kings and O Brother Where Art Thou (for which he won a Golden Globe), but didn't find Oscar love until 2005 when he was nominated for Best Director for Good Night and Good Luck (losing to Ang Lee) and won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for Syriana. He was also nominated two years ago for Michael Clayton, losing to Daniel Day-Lewis.
Colin Firth (b. 1960)
Revered by Jane Austen fans for his portrayal of Darcy in the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice, for a long time he was better known as the cuckolded husband in two Best Picture winners: The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love. Though very popular in Britain, he has never really received any awards attention until this year.
Morgan Freeman (b. 1937)
Born in the greatest year for actors ever (also born in 1937: Anthony Hopkins, Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford), Freeman was long known (especially in my household) for being Easy Reader on The Electric Company. He first got the Academy's attention with the role of the brutal pimp in Street Smart, earning a Best Supporting Actor nomination, but losing to Sean Connery. Two years later he was nominated for Best Actor for Driving Miss Daisy (for which he won the Golden Globe), but lost to Daniel Day-Lewis and missed out on a nomination for his role in Glory. In 1994 he was again nominated for Best Actor for The Shawshank Redemption, this time losing to Tom Hanks. His fourth nomination came with an Oscar attached, winning Best Supporting Actor for Million Dollar Baby in 2004. I just have to say I've never met someone who didn't like Morgan Freeman and in Deep Impact, he played the President, named Thomas Beck, which is the name of both my son and my father.
Jeremy Renner (b. 1971)
Renner has appeared as if out of nowhere this year with his performance in The Hurt Locker, but like many actors who do that, he has been steadily working in film and television for years. He's even had smaller roles in other films that have received Oscar nominations, such as North Country and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
Awards Attention So Far:
Jeff Bridges - SAG, Golden Globe (Drama), Broadcast Film Critics, LA Film Critics, nominated by BAFTA
George Clooney - NY Film Critics, National Board of Review, nominated by SAG, Globes (Drama), BAFTA and Broadcast Film Critics
Colin Firth - nominated by SAG, Globes (Drama), BAFTA and Broadcast Film Critics
Morgan Freeman - National Board of Review, nominated by SAG, Globes (Drama) and Broadcast Film Critics
Jeremy Renner - National Society of Film Critics, Boston Film Critics, Chicago Film Critics, nominated by SAG, BAFTA and Broadcast Film Critics
The Race:
George Clooney and Morgan Freeman took the early lead, with both winning the National Board of Review Award for Best Actor. Then the New York Film Critics gave their award to Clooney, cementing him as the frontrunner. Nothing much changed with the nominations from the Broadcast Film Critics or the Golden Globes, as Clooney, Bridges, Freeman and Firth were all nominated for both, though the nomination for Renner from the BFCA was the start of his good luck. From there, the LA Film Critics chimed in, giving their award to Bridges and seeming to sway the momentum. But then the rest of the major critics groups gave their awards and Renner won all of them as part of the major Hurt Locker sweeps. Then came the SAG nominations and all five were again nominated. But then came the actual awards ceremonies and Bridges started taking home awards, first the BFCA, then the Globe and then the SAG and suddenly everyone was talking about how he was set to finally win an Oscar. The BAFTA nominations omitted Morgan Freeman, but otherwise really cemented the five positions of the nominees (so much so that I could write this whole thing before the nominations were announced).
The Possibilities:
Bridges can look at the fact that the last four actors to win SAG, the BFCA and the Globe all won the Oscar. But those four were Daniel Day-Lewis, Forest Whitaker, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jamie Foxx and all four had won multiple critics awards. Bridges doesn't have that much support from the critics awards. Russell Crowe won all three of those in 2001 and then lost to Oscar to Denzel Washington. Of course, Bridges is widely admired and Crowe at the time had been acting badly in public and that might have influenced things. But Daniel Day-Lewis in 2002 had won the SAG, the BFCA and the BAFTA and three critics groups (including New York and LA) and still lost to Adrian Brody. Even if Bridges wins, it will be the least convincing win since 2003 when Sean Penn won over Bill Murray who had dominated the critics awards. The SAG seems to be the biggest tip-off should Bridges win. The SAG awards began in 1994 and except for a four year stretch from 2000-2003, they have always agree with the Oscar.
The Brody and Washington wins should give hope to Clooney and Renner. Brody and Washington both had some major critics wins and had lost the Globe and SAG and both had failed to even be nominated by the BFCA. Washington is also the last person to win Best Actor without a BAFTA nomination, so that gives some hope to Morgan Freeman. As for Colin Firth? Well, the last person to win Best Actor without winning any of the six major critics groups was Russell Crowe in 2000, but he won the BFCA. Before that it was Tom Hanks, but he won the Golden Globe. The last person to win Best Actor at the Oscars without winning any of those major pre-cursors? You have to go all the way back to Jack Lemmon for Save the Tiger in 1973, when he won the Oscar with only a Golden Globe nomination to show for it before hand. And before that, it was Charlton Heston in 1959.
So don't rule out Clooney or Renner, but the betting odds go to Jeff Bridges finally winning an Oscar.
Finally, in the past I've written some posts on the Best Actor category as part of my History of the Academy Awards series that I did last year - they can be found here and here.
