Best Actor 2015: Zeroing in on the Five (plus poll)

The most competitive category in the Oscar race is traditionally Best Picture. All of the heat is in the big prize, naturally, though on occasion the focus shifts to other categories. Where Best Actress is generally the most fraught with drama, Best Actor is stuff full of so many contenders it just might burst wide open.

Where men flourish in the Best Actor category, playing a wide variety of characters up one side of the human experience and down the other. We have great men like Stephen Hawking and Alan Turing and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Louis Zamperini. We have hollow men like Riggan Thomson in Birdman. We have murderers, like John Du Pont in Foxcatcher. We have old men, young men, rich men, poor men, ambitious men, men who are failures. We have husbands, we have leaders, we have gay men, we have straight men.

Television has led us to adore our antiheroes and this year, we will have them pitted against the heroes. Usually, where Oscar is concerned, heroes win. The more the Best Picture heat, the better the chance for a nomination. That, and how popular an actor is.

The two voting bodies that usually get a too-early spot in the race are the Golden Globes and the SAG awards. Their deadlines are usually very early in the race and often reflect that early buzz, before the consensus really takes place. Let’s take a quick look at Best Actor spread out among the various major voting bodies:

Christian Bale and Leonardo DiCaprio pushed through, knocking out Tom Hanks for Captain Phillips and Robert Redford for All is Lost.  Both David O. Russell and Martin Scorsese earned Best Director nominations, along with Best Picture, proving that sometimes the stronger and more popular a film is overall with the Academy the better chances for a nomination. Usually if a performance is exceptional beyond words or if the actor is popular beyond words they will nominate him anyway. Tom Hanks had already won two Best Actor Oscars and Robert Redford did not do any of the required campaigning (good for him but ultimately that makes a huge difference).

Right now, there are no solid frontrunners in any category, except perhaps Julianne Moore in Still Alice. Let’s take a quick look at the Oscar race as it stands today, before other movies fold in. The next one of these is going to be Fury. We have to wait for Unbroken, Into the Woods, Selma, A Most Violent Year and Interstellar. But let’s look at what has been seen and how the Oscar race might be decided today before those films open. For the major categories, allowing for nine Best Picture contenders because there are never ten and there will never be anything less than nine, it seems like.

Best Picture
Boyhood
The Imitation Game
The Theory of Everything
Birdman
Gone Girl
Foxcatcher
Whiplash
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Mr. Turner
Alt. The Homesman

Best Director
Richard Linklater, Boyhood
Alejandro Inarritu, Birdman
David Fincher, Gone Girl
Damien Chazelle, Whiplash
Either Morten Tyldum for Imitation Game or James Marsh for The Theory of Everything

Best Actor
Michael Keaton, Birdman
Benedict Cumberbatch, Imitation Game
Eddie Redmayne, Theory of Everything
Steve Carell, Foxcatcher
Ben Affleck, Gone Girl
Alt: Miles Teller, Whiplash, Timothy Spall, Mr. Turner

Best Actress
Julianne Moore, Still Alice
Julianne Moore, Maps to the Stars
Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl
Reese Witherspoon, Wild
Hilary Swank, The Homesman
Alt: Felicity Jones, Theory of Everything

Best Supporting Actor
JK Simmons, Whiplash
Ed Norton, Birdman
Mark Ruffalo, Foxcatcher
Evan Bird, Maps to the Stars
Tommy Lee Jones, The Homesman
Alt. John Cusack, Maps to the Stars

Best Supporting Actress
Patricia Arquette, Boyhood
Keira Knightley, The Imitation Game
Emma Stone, Birdman
Laura Dern Wild
Kristen Stewart, Still Alice
Alt: Carrie Coon, Gone Girl, Viola Davis, Eleanor Rigby, Naomi Watts, St. Vincent, Melissa McCarthy, St. Vincent

Original Screenplay
Richard Linklater, Boyhood
Bruce Wagner, Maps to the Stars
Alejandro Inarritu et al, Birdman
E. Max Frye, Dan Futterman, Foxcatcher
Mike Leigh, Mr. Turner

Adapted Screenplay
Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
Damien Chazelle, Whiplash
Anthony McCarten, The Thoery of Everything
Graham Moore, The Imitation Game
Wes Anderson, Grand Budapest Hotel

As you can see, the biggest and most crowded categories are always going to be (in what Lynda Obst calls the new abnormal) Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress. Hollywood and the critics seem to prefer lead actors, supporting actresses. There really isn’t a better combination for your Best Picture frontrunners than that. This year, so far, there are only three that buck that system – the first is David Fincher’s wildly brilliant Gone Girl. The second is Tommy Lee Jones’ The Homesman and the third is Jean-Marc Vallees, Wild. The fourth of these (four!) is Rob Marshall’s Into the Woods, still not yet seen. Each of these three films contains strong female leads that drive the story.

But getting back to the topic at hand, Best Actor is going to be insanely crowded this year. Let’s see where this category might be going.

By my count, as of now, there are four locks:

1. Michael Keaton, Birdman
2. Benedict Cumberbatch, The Imitation Game
3. Eddie Redmayne, Theory of Everything
4. Steve Carell, Foxcatcher

After that, there are many contenders hovering on the fringe for that fifth slot that we’ve already seen, like Timothy Spall, who won Best Actor in Cannes for Mr. Turner in a breathtaking, unforgettable performance. Like Jake Gyllenhaal, making waves in Toronto. Like Miles Teller, so utterly mesmerizing in Whiplash. Like Ralph Fiennes, hilarious in The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Still, are we really only talking about one slot? Last year at this time we thought Robert Redford was one of the locks and he was knocked out. We also thought that the Academy might make Bruce Dern a supporting contender. They didn’t. I don’t know which of these four is the weakest, though people will try to say it’s Carell. I don’t believe that. I don’t anywhere near believe it. They will also say they should put him in supporting. They won’t. He’s not only remarkable in the part, he’s a well liked human being overall. The only thing that could hurt him is that he’s a former comedian and there is that prejudice about comedians.

Speaking of comedians, this will also be, or could be, a problem for Michael Keaton – a versatile and hard working actor who has had to, ironically, live down being Batman back before it was really cool to be Batman. If we’re talking about finding a winner right now, we have to say it’s between Keaton and Cumberbatch, probably, when all is said and done. Cumberbatch and Redmayne are going to have to compete for Best British Genius Hero. That will be a problem throughout the season for these two projects, canceling each other out. Winners are often that which is unlike anything else. Keaton is so wildly overdue, however, and so off the charts great in Birdman I have a hard time believing he isn’t the frontrunner. ON THE OTHER HAND, we know from their history that Oscar tends to reward heroes or good guys, which seems to give Cumberbatch or Redmayne the edge.

This part of the race is too soon to know, as there are so many big movies with lead actors coming. Those are:

1. David Oyelowo, Selma
2. Bradley Cooper, American Sniper
3. Brad Pitt, Fury
4. Matthew McConaughey, Interstellar
5. Jack O’Connell, Unbroken
6. Oscar Isaac, A Most Violent Year

Either one of these will crack the above top five or else none of them will. It’s too soon to know and anyone who pretends they know is blowing smoke. Sorry, but the knowable can’t be known until it’s known.

So of those I’ve just discussed, which five do you think have the best chance.

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