It’s the Best Best Supporting Actor Category in the History of Oscars

One of the reasons we get so caught up in the Oscars is because of the tradition and history of it all. The actors we award in 2013 get the same award that was bestowed in 1928. And as with any institution that prizes its history, the record books are full of all sorts of little milestones. Emmanuelle Riva is the oldest Best Actress nominee! Quvenzhane Wallis the youngest! In that respect, Oscar nerds are no different from, say, baseballs nerds. We both like records and milestones and firsts and all-time bests.

One bit of history was made with Thursday morning’s Oscar nominations, when the Best Supporting Actor category was composed entirely of former winners. That’s the first time that’s ever happened in an acting category. In fact, looking back through the record books, there are only eight (now nine) acting categories that even became an all-winners lineup after the fact. Are these the best acting lineups in Oscar’s history? Judge for yourself.

2012 Best Supporting Actor

Alan Arkin – “Argo”
Robert DeNiro – “Silver Linings Playbook”
Phillip Seymour Hoffman – “The Master”
Tommy Lee Jones – “Lincoln”
Christoph Waltz – “Django Unchained”

Five previous winners, meaning one of these guys is about to become a two-time Oscar champion (or, in the event of a DeNiro win, three-time). Hoffman’s previous win was in Best Actor (“Capote”), while Arkin, Jones, and Waltz have Supporting Actor trophies on shelves in their respective bathrooms.

2006 Best Actress

Helen Mirren – “The Queen”
Penelope Cruz – “Volver”
Judi Dench – “Notes on a Scandal”
Meryl Streep – “The Devil Wears Prada”
Kate Winslet – “Little Children”

When nominations were announced, only Streep (“Kramer vs. Kramer”; “Sophie’s Choice”) and Dench (“Shakespeare in Love”) were Oscar-winners. Mirren would go on to win here, and in 2008, both Cruz (for “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”) and Winslet (for “The Reader”) joined the winners’ club.

2002 Best Actor

Adrien Brody – “The Pianist”
Nicolas Cage – “Adaptation
Michael Caine – “The Quiet American”
Daniel Day-Lewis – “Gangs of New York”
Jack Nicholson – “About Schmidt”

On Oscar night, Brody faced down FOUR previous Oscar winners and ended up pulling one of the most memorable upsets in Academy history. All told, the five men in the category have won EIGHT Oscars, and are likely on their way to nine, with Daniel Day-Lewis’s likely win for “Lincoln” this year.

2001 Best Actress

Halle Berry – “Monster’s Ball”
Judi Dench – “Iris”
Nicole Kidman – “Moulin Rouge!”
Sissy Spacek – “In the Bedroom”
Renee Zellweger – “Bridget Jones’s Diary”

Judi Dench and Sissy Spacek were the only Oscar-winners in the category back in 2001, with Berry soon to join them via a hyperventilating freakout of an acceptance speech. The very next year, Kidman would win for “The Hours,” and the year after that, Zellweger would complete the circuit by winning Best Supporting Actress for “Cold Mountain.”

2001 Best Supporting Actress

Jennifer Connelly – “A Beautiful Mind”
Helen Mirren – “Gosford Park”
Maggie Smith – “Gosford Park”
Marisa Tomei – “In the Bedroom”
Kate Winslet – “Iris”

On nomination day, only two-time winner Maggie Smith (“The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”; “California Suite”) and Marisa Tomei (“My Cousin Vinny”) were previous winners. Connelly triumphed on Oscar night, and by the end of the decade, Mirren and Winslet’s wins would make this an all-winners lineup, as well as a Best Supporting Actress category populated by three Best Actress winners.

1990 Best Actress

Kathy Bates – “Misery”
Anjelica Huston – “The Grifters”
Julia Roberts – “Pretty Woman”
Meryl Streep – “Postcards from the Edge”
Joanne Woodward – “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge”

Streep, Huston, and Woodward all had Oscars on their bookshelves when these nominations were announced (maybe that’s why Streep and Woodward didn’t bother to attend that year). Bates became the fourth winner in the group by winning for “Misery,” and ten years later (to the day!), Julia Roberts would win for “Erin Brockovich.”

1985 Best Actress

Geraldine Page – “The Trip to Bountiful”
Anne Bancroft – “Agnes of God”
Whoopi Goldberg – “The Color Purple”
Jessica Lange – “Sweet Dreams”
Meryl Streep – “Out of Africa”

Meryl Streep had already won twice, Anne Bancroft had won for “The Miracle Worker” in 1962, and Jessica Lange had won her first of two Oscars in 1982 for “Tootsie.” After eight previous nominations, Geraldine Page finally won for “The Trip to Bountiful.” And in 1990, Whoopi Goldberg made this category 5/5 with her Supporting Actress win for “Ghost.”

1968 Best Actress

Barbra Streisand – “Funny Girl”
Katharine Hepburn – “The Lion in Winter”
Patricia Neal – “The Subject Was Roses”
Vanessa Redgrave – “Isadora”
Joanne Woodward – “Rachel, Rachel”

This category is history-making for more than one reason, as Streisand and Hepburn tied for the Best Actress win. It was Hepburn’s second in a row, after winning for “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” the year before, and her third of a record-setting four Oscar wins. Both Woodward (“The Three Faces of Eve”) and Neal (“Hud”) were already Oscar-winners by this point, and in 1977, Vanessa Redgrave would give her infamous “Zionist hoodlums” speech, after winning Best Supporting Actress for “Julia.”

1939 Best Actor

Robert Donat – “Goodbye, Mr. Chips”
Clark Gable – “Gone With the Wind”
Laurence Olivier – “Wuthering Heights”
Mickey Rooney – “Babes in Arms”
James Stewart – “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”

This year comes with a bit of an asterisk, as Mickey Rooney was a recipient of the Academy Juvenile Award in 1938. Still, it’s an acting award, so let’s be generous to the Mickster and say it counts.

BONUS: 2008 Best Actress

Kate Winslet – “The Reader”
Anne Hathaway – “Rachel Getting Married”
Angelina Jolie – “Changeling”
Melissa Leo – “Frozen River
Meryl Streep – “Doubt”

This category doesn’t count … yet. But Winslet, Streep, Jolie, and Leo are all winners, and with Anne Hathaway a GIANT lock to win Best Supporting Actress this year, it’s only a matter of time.

Categories: Awards

Tags: Alan Arkin, Christoph Waltz, philip seymour hoffman, robert deniro, tommy lee jones

Review: ‘Lincoln’ Is a Painless History Lesson

Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” carries the weight of history on its shoulders like a marble mantle, and sometimes – like its central figure, a leggy stick-bug of a man who shouldered one of our country’s biggest moral burdens — it stoops under all that heaviness. And yet Spielberg is enough of a showman to prevent “Lincoln” from seeming merely good for you, like spinach. History is made by people, not by figureheads carved in stone, and even if “Lincoln” sometimes belabors its points, there’s still plenty of oxygen in its atmosphere: Its characters, people who lived long ago and who tended to be much more loquacious than a 140-character burst would allow, somehow seem to breathe the same air we do.

Set in 1865 — and adapted by Tony Kushner from portions of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Lincoln — the picture is a condensed yet detailed account of our 16th president’s push to pass the 13th Amendment, and it holds surprising doses of cinematic drama in its expansive pockets. The picture opens with a rugged, muddy battle sequence whose eerie placidity only makes it seem more brutal – it’s a case of black Union soldiers squaring off against Confederates who have a thousand reasons to resent them, and the outcome is ugly for everybody. Shortly thereafter, two young black Union soldiers stand respectfully before a shadowy figure, giving him the thumbnail version of their experience of the war and intimating some of their hopes for the future.

It’s a screenwriter’s moment, a too-polished précis. But Spielberg turns the heat up pretty quickly as the camera drifts toward the face of the man they’re so enthralled to meet: It’s Daniel Day-Lewis, looking as if he’d just stepped off the front of a five-dollar bill, and the face he’s wearing is that of a listener – and that’s the first, though hardly the last, significant human touch in “Lincoln.” Everyone knows Lincoln was a great orator (and we see that here, too). But who ever thinks of him – or would know how to portray him – as a great listener?

Day-Lewis is a marvelous actor when he doesn’t succumb — as he did in “There Will Be Blood” — to hyper-actorly mannerisms, and here he plays a man of infinite tenderness and almost unplumbable melancholy. One of the movie’s running gags – it’s almost as pronounced as a “Saturday Night Live” routine – is Lincoln’s habit of spinning out corny yarns that always come with a potent metaphor attached. Day-Lewis plays those moments for laughs, knowing, it seems, that great men are usually the last ones to be in on their own joke. Yet his finest scenes may be the ones he plays with Sally Field, as Mary Todd Lincoln: Fields is one of those rare actresses who has allowed herself to grow into the face she was meant to have (though here she looks much younger than her actual 67 years), and she and Day-Lewis play out the kind of behind-closed-doors intimacy that may very well come along with all the stress and worry of inhabiting the White House.

But most significantly – as the title of Goodwin’s book spells out — Lincoln was, politically speaking, intensely shrewd. That’s where the chief drama of “Lincoln” kicks in, although oddly enough, many of the picture’s most striking moments don’t even require the presence of its title character. Day-Lewis gives a fine lead performance, but it’s really the ensemble that makes the movie, particularly in the nuanced, contentious scenes in which the House of Representatives duke it out over the slavery issue. This was a time, remember, when the term “Radical Republicans” didn’t mean wily, ruthless Tea Partiers: It was these radicals who pushed for an end to slavery. In their eyes, Lincoln, who was sensible about the political as well as moral reasons for ending slavery, was too much of a moderate.

Spielberg and Kushner work hard to keep the complicated political threadlines clear. They even manage to work in some laughs, courtesy of three rapscallion lobbyists – played by John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson, and, most wonderful of all, a pudgy, mustachioed James Spader – who are dispatched by Lincoln’s Secretary of State William Seward (a buttoned-up, watchful David Strathairn) to change the minds of the balky Democrats. There are lots of villains here (including Jackie Earle Haley’s lizardy Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens), but even more heroes (among them Jared Harris’ suitably sozzled-looking Ulysses S. Grant).

“Lincoln,” as shot by Spielberg regular Janusz Kaminski, has a burnished, gaslit look: It’s a handsome figure of a film. But its truest triumph may lie in the casting of Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens, the Radical Republican – and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee – who led the charge against slavery. Jones’ Stevens is a thundercloud with a sturdy moral sense and very bad hair; he even makes a pointed reference to his clumsy wig, asserting that he looks worse without it. That sets the stage for the picture’s most deeply moving moment (which also features S. Epatha Merkeson, in a small but potent role),  a scene that cuts a window into the way some powerful, cranky men allow themselves vulnerability only behind closed doors. Jones’s performance is a wonder. Even those heavy under-eye pouches, the most recognizable TLJ trademark, have a purpose here: They carry whatever his eyes alone aren’t able to say. Abraham Lincoln may be Lincoln’s reason for being. But Jones’ Thaddeus Stevens is its reason to care.

Grade: B+

Categories: Reviews

Tags: daniel day-lewis, james spader, Lincoln, Sally Field, steven spielbert, tommy lee jones