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When Harris and Williams appeared to be our official front runners for Best Supporting Actress prior to Viola Davis making the decision to campaign in the category at least one member here said they were disappointed Williams’ Oscar would be a supporting one.
For actress fans award recognition and category placement are always do or die. Reality is most supporting actress winners never rise up to get second Oscars in Best Actress. Only thrice in the history of the Oscars has that occurred. And those three women are juggernauts: Meryl Streep, Jessica Lange, and Cate Blanchett. (Lange’s Blue Sky win remains controversial despite the weakness of her category.)
I fear for Jessica Chastain having to settle for supporting actress just to have an Oscar. And two-time Best Actress nominee Naomi Watts likely best bet at ever winning the damn thing is supporting actress. Who knows what the future holds?
ReplyPeople thought the same thing about Julianne Moore. That her time had maybe passed and she’d either win supporting actress or never win at all. But Still Alice happened. And she wasn’t a juggernaut. But the respect she had in the industry took her over the line.
As long as they are still working in respectable projects, actresses like Watts and Chastain have enough standing in the industry to win a leading actress Oscar. Julianne Moore is a great inspiration in that regard.
ReplyCopy URLDoes it matter what category you win in? You become an OSCAR winner – as I wrote in another thread (to which no one responded), what is with this idea of one category being more prestigious? An actor who wins Supporting or Lead is still “Academy-Award Winner So-and-So”. The statuettes are the same size, for example. Someone wrote they would rather lose in Best Actress than WIN in Supporting. That seems crazy to me. I’m sure Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong’o and Alicia Vikander don’t care in the slightest and are happy to be Oscar winners.
ReplyCopy URLThis topic always makes me think of Talia Shire who was nominated for Lead Actress for “Rocky” up against Faye Dunaway in “Network”. I don’t feel Talia Shire had any chance of winning. However, if she had gone supporting, then she most likely would have won. Beatrice Straight won that year for “Network”. Was she thinking a Lead Actress nomination is better than a Supporting Actress Oscar??
ReplyCopy URLDoes it matter what category you win in? You become an OSCAR winner – as I wrote in another thread (to which no one responded), what is with this idea of one category being more prestigious? An actor who wins Supporting or Lead is still “Academy-Award Winner So-and-So”. The statuettes are the same size, for example. Someone wrote they would rather lose in Best Actress than WIN in Supporting. That seems crazy to me. I’m sure Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong’o and Alicia Vikander don’t care in the slightest and are happy to be Oscar winners.
Agreed. And there are plenty of supporting actor winners whose work I found more memorable and powerful than some of the “more important” leading actor roles, e.g. Javier Bardem in NCFOM. It’s ridiculous to think that an actor getting an Oscar for a supporting role would be forced to see it as a consolation prize.
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For fuck’s sake a golden dildo is a golden dildo. In whatever category you win you’re still a golden dildo winner. For producers it doesn’t mean a shit becaue they only use Academy Award winner in trailers and on posters. They don’t put Academy Award winner for acting in leading role because who the fuck cares. These days general audiences don’t even care about Oscars. And most actors do not care about category placement they just want to be nominated and/or win. That’s why we have so many fucking category frauds these days. Honestly it’s only internet queens who care about their precious actresses winning in leading category. For example I don’t care in what category Siggy Weaver, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Charlotte Rampling, Michelle Pfeiffer, Imelda Staunton or Cammy Diaz win. I only want to live in a world were these fabulous actresses are Oscar winners.
ReplyCopy URLThis topic always makes me think of Talia Shire who was nominated for Lead Actress for “Rocky” up against Faye Dunaway in “Network”. I don’t feel Talia Shire had any chance of winning. However, if she had gone supporting, then she most likely would have won. Beatrice Straight won that year for “Network”. Was she thinking a Lead Actress nomination is better than a Supporting Actress Oscar??
Borderline female roles often went lead instead of supporting in those days because of the relative lack of dominant leading roles for women in mainstream movies.
ReplyCopy URLAccepting supporting will actually prevent Davis to win lead in the future. They won’t reward her again in the next ten years unless she’s a juggernaut which is extremely hard in lead for a woman who is now nearly 52. And yes, good roles for women over 50 are rare for actresses, but even rarer for an African American. Now with that supporting actress Oscar, it would be extremely hard for Viola to have the narrative to win in lead and we all know that wins are all about that narrative.
Chastain is actually quite divisive. She managed two nominations in 2012 and 2013, but since then, the Academy just doesn’t care about her (that’s five years and she’ll turn 40 this year).
I have a feeling that Close, Weaver, and Bening will have to settle for supporting at best. Of the three, I have this hunch that Bening will win and the other two won’t. They had the perfect opportunity to reward Close but they didn’t and I believe that Hollywood just doesn’t like her. This seems to be the case with Weaver as well. No matter how overdue she is, no matter how hard she campaigns, they just don’t care.
ReplyCopy URLAccepting supporting will actually prevent Davis to win lead in the future. They won’t reward her again in the next ten years unless she’s a juggernaut which is extremely hard in lead for a woman who is now nearly 52. And yes, good roles for women over 50 are rare for actresses, but even rarer for an African American. Now with that supporting actress Oscar, it would be extremely hard for Viola to have the narrative to win in lead and we all know that wins are all about that narrative.
Viola Davis is not a causally discarded entity. Securing further nominations and the reminder Halle Berry is the sole nonwhite winner in the Best Actress category will keep her in the conversation for a second one.
ReplyCopy URLNope, as previously said I don’t think it matters. That are still Oscar winners and in the likes of trailer and movie posters, they will forever be titled as ‘Academy Award winner’
I don’t even think it matters in Hollywood, for example, look at Gwenyth winning her Lead Actress oscar only to then go on and get barely any worthy roles or even another nomination, but compare her to Angelina Jolie, who won in supporting, that boosted her career and she went on to have a very successful film career.
ReplyCopy URLWell, It hink it somehow matters when you have two females or males in starring roles with nearly the same screentime. One is pushed in lead and one in Supporting these days, just to secure two acting nominations.
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The one in lead might be seen as the bigger star/legend than the one in Suppporting.
Or in special genres like sci-fi or fantasy, it’s much easier to get nominated in Supporting than in Lead imo.I agree an Oscar is an Oscar. I’d rather win for Best Anything than have no gold. It just sucks when someone like Emma Stone in Birdman, Viola Davis in Doubt or Michelle Williams in Manchester by the Sea has their chances diminished because someone else has more screen time than they do.
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