In a very weak year for lead actress performances, Jennifer Aniston seeks notice for her work in the character piece Cake. Though mostly met with mixed to negative reviews, Aniston has something her competitors on the fringe mostly don’t have: major star power. I guess it doesn’t need saying that bringing Aniston in a race where Angelina Jolie is front and center could prove too delicious for gossip sites to ignore. It could turn into a big thing, like a Kathryn Bigelow vs. Jim Cameron thing and no one is really bringing it up. The reason they don’t bring it up is a good one: who cares? It isn’t that anyone cares, nor should they – a silly tabloid contrivance built to sell magazines that women inclined towards fantasy and taking sides fell way too easily into – Gone Girl anyone? Yet, it’s still out there, this presence of a presumed conflict that could rear its ugly head.
Bringing herself out front and center during Oscar season is the way to publicize a movie, especially if critics aren’t going to do it for you. It also helps Aniston earn, potentially, a Golden Globe nod for role, maybe a Spirit Award. To get an Oscar nod she doesn’t need to appeal to critics. She needs to appeal to actors and they might be appreciative of a Big TV actress dressing herself down and stretching her acting abilities on a smaller scale.
Aniston has been quietly delivering challenging performances for a while now but hasn’t ever really put her star power front and center like she is doing now and that could make all of the difference. It WILL certainly make the difference for the Golden Globes where we will have our dress rehearsal for the potential media frenzy around the Brad/Jen/Angelina love triangle. It’s just like Debbie Reynolds/Eddie Fisher/Elizabeth Taylor! Like that this story, this one has been hard to let go of because women don’t want to let it go. They cast Aniston as the good girl and Angelina as the bad girl, which was absurd. Every once in a while they drag it out and there they are – a fake story on the cover of Us Weekly, which has done more harm to the evolution of women than just about anything else in mainstream media.
While the gossip sites might make a big deal over it, I’m sure it’s water under the bridge for Aniston and certainly for Jolie and Pitt, who have gone on to grow their family and finally get married. Meanwhile, the ongoing fake drama spoon fed to desperate women who “identify” with Aniston has obsessed on whether Aniston will get pregnant, whether she’s married – her love life an ongoing distraction. Oh, the humanity.
But all of that aside, can Aniston break into the top five? The bored pundits keep creating scenarios that swap out one or two but I’m not sure the five is shakable. Let’s go through them.
1. Julianne Moore for Still Alice – Moore is so overdue that all she really needed was a double year like this one where she plays an aging actress resorting to desperate measures in Maps to the Stars, and a professor facing Alzheimer’s in Still Alice, the latter will likely win her award. Moore is showing up, meaning she’s already appeared in pivotal spots so far and is likely prepared to do what even Meryl Streep had to do during the Iron Lady – shake hands, talk to people, in it to win it. She’s in the number one spot and because of her overdue status doesn’t really have any competitors except…
2. Reese Witherspoon is also very much in it to win it and has been appearing everywhere. The MVP for women filmmaking has produced two films this year, Gone Girl and Wild, for which she will likely receive an acting nomination. Witherspoon carries the entire film, turns herself inside out emotionally and if she hadn’t won already for Walk the Line she’d be the one who beat Moore. But therein lies the rub. She HAS won before. To beat a beloved overdue actress with a second win is near impossible in the Oscar race. Nonetheless, Witherspoon’s appearances are as both producer and actress. If Wild managed a Best Picture nomination, Witherspoon could enter the race with three Oscar nominations, two for producing and one for acting – has that even happened ever?
3. Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl – Among the best performances of the year, Gone Girl is about to make $160 million. Pike’s never had the chance to show her range, always cast as the “pretty girl” or the “cool blonde.” In Fincher’s film she upends that stereotype, naturally, as that’s some of what the film is about. Pike is being honored at the Palm Spring’s Film Festival with the Best Actress award. She will also be making appearances but she is either about to give birth or has given birth so it’s going to be a tricky season for her, publicity wise. In Pike’s case, she will likely be in a strong Best Picture contender, which helps her but she’s up against Moore, which is really insurmountable.
4. Hilary Swank in The Homesman – here is where pundits will likely see vulnerability because Swank (spoiler alert) gives such a strong performance that when she leaves the film she leaves a giant hole, or so some have said. Swank is always good and is a two-time winner already. That either helps her or hurts her, I can’t tell, but either way if you’re talking about who deserves to be nominated you simply can’t overlook Swank.
5. Felicity Jones for The Theory of Everything – here is the second actress from a potential Best Picture contender, which always helps. Jones is kind of young to be a frontrunner in the category but she’s just magnificent in The Theory of Everything. I suspect that if you love this movie you can’t help but love her performance. The film is almost more about her life than about Stephen Hawking’s but both actors reach such a magnetic symbiosis it’s probably going to be one of those situations where they both keep getting nominated.
Therefore, I’m not seeing any wiggle room here for Aniston, although I remember saying the same thing last year only to be horrified when Amy Adams bumped Emma Thompson from the race. It can happen. Robert Redford also got bumped for Bradley Cooper. Late breaking films can sometimes do that. Indeed, David Oyelowo in Selma will break through, maybe even Jack O’Connell from Unbroken.
Adams, I suspect, broke through because she appeared in a popular Best Picture contender that worked overall for the industry and the critics. If they love the movie they’re going to reward the actors, especially if those actors worked with David O. Russell, a favorite of the actors.
For Aniston to break through there will have to be an extraordinary reason for that and from what I’ve been reading about Cake I’m not seeing it in the way people are responding to the film. But if Angelina Jolie can push her film through, at least so far, on star power alone, it’s certainly possible star power alone can also propel Aniston into the race, giving tabloids a big piece of meat to stew on all season.