The Acting Races are Still Wide Open – Take Our Poll!

You can’t trust the critics and you can’t trust the Globes, not completely, but you can mostly trust the Screen Actors Guild. We have a ways to go before they lay out their winners. The critics have spoken and they mostly seem to align with:

Best Actor – Casey Affleck
Best Actress – Isabelle Huppert / Natalie Portman
Supporting Actor – Mahershala Ali
Supporting Actress – it was a crap shoot but eventually Viola Davis emerged as the frontrunner

But this doesn’t necessarily mean that is how Oscar is going to go. It might be how the Golden Globes will go. The jury is still out on these, and there might even be a spoiler or two waiting in the wings.

Here are the spoilers as far as I can tell:

Best Actor – Denzel Washington in Fences. We have to just be honest about this and admit that there is no better performance by a male actor this year. If he doesn’t win it won’t be because anyone was better but because he has two Oscars already and three would put him in elite company:

Katharine Hepburn (4)
Daniel Day-Lewis
Meryl Streep
Jack Nicholson
Ingrid Bergman
Walter Brennan

And that’s it. Notice there are no black actors on that list – so yes, Denzel Washington would be the first to do that. So he’s in the number one spoiler spot. Might he win the SAG over Casey Affleck? It’s hard to say. Manchester by the Sea has four nominations. That’s a lot. They like the movie a lot. It might even win ensemble and actor.

Andrew Garfield remains a spoiler to win Best Actor. He might do this at the Globes, where Hacksaw Ridge became a surprise nominee. Why Garfield is a threat is that he stars in two hard hitting films this year – Hacksaw Ridge and Silence. Of all of the actors up for the prize, his is the most physically taxing and transformative. Denzel Washington gained weight for the part of Troy in Fences, and Andrew Garfield put himself through grueling conditions for both Silence and Hacksaw Ridge.

Lately, the frontrunner for Best Actor starts out winning and doesn’t stop. If you look back past Globe winners, the only times in recent years where the Globe drama winner didn’t go on to win the Oscar were the following:

Mickey Rourke winning for The Wrestler (Sean Penn won the SAG and the Oscar)
George Clooney winning for The Descendants (Jean DuJardin won the SAG and the Oscar)

So if Casey Affleck wins the Globe and Denzel Washington wins the SAG? Washington will take the Oscar. But if Casey Affleck wins the Globe and the SAG? Well, it’s a done deal. Some have asked me to address the sexual harassment charges against Affleck and measures those against Nate Parker and The Birth of a Nation. I think that this Buzzfeed article lays it out pretty well overall. As Affleck’s lead intensifies, so will the outrage against him intensify. Whether it will impact his win is not known but as of yet, it doesn’t seem to have made a difference one way or the other.

As far as Best Actress goes, we all know it’s a wide open, very competitive race where any of them CAN win. The two frontrunners seem to still be: Emma Stone for La La Land, even though she has not won much of any precursors and Natalie Portman for Jackie. Once again it will come down the SAG. If we look back on Globe history, it’s even more tight with the Globes. In every instance since 2008, Globe drama winner has taken the Oscar except in 2012 when Jennifer Lawrence took the win in comedy and then went on to win the Oscar. I still shake my head at that win – which proves that you really can’t overthink these things. People tend to do the same things over and over again.

The spoilers would be Isabelle Huppert and believe it or not, Amy Adams. Adams gives two great performances in Arrival and Nocturnal Animals. The former is absolutely a worthy performance to win. So if she wins the Globe, watch out. She could turn into the new favorite to win. Is Annette Bening still in play? Well, sure she is. It has never happened in the years since SAG formed that a nominee for Best Actress won the Oscar without being nominated there, but that only goes back to 1995. Before that, one needed a Globe nomination to win and Bening has that.

Best Actress does seem up in the air on account of Emma Stone not wracking up the wins so far. I imagine that to the critics Portman’s is the more serious and therefore the more difficult. Emma Stone can still win the SAG and if she does that, well, it’s all over.

Take our poll! Please pick one actor and one actress to win.