The Film Experience

A consistent yet elusive golden thrill: that moment in each year's Oscar race wherein everyone disagrees on who and what is the frontrunner in this or that category.

There are a few different schools of thought out there about who might win Best Actor. I have always believed and probably will continue to believe that the race for Oscar nominations is a very different and altogether more interesting contest than who will eventually win them. Because of this I like to focus on that before I get to "who will win" but I'll make an exception today for fun. Most experts (see this handy Gurus of Gold chart) currently name Michael Keaton (Birdman), Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything) and Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game) as the leading threats to win the statue. I agree wholeheartedly with this and actually believe that they're the only three who could pull off a win in this particular year (unless American Sniper is some sort of late breaking Oscar stampeding Million Dollar Baby for Bradley Cooper... but I personally doubt it). Who will fill the other two 'not-in-it-for-the-win' slots is anyone's guess. I've returned again to the unpopular notion that Channing Tatum and Steve Carell will both win Best Actor nominations for Foxcatcher but I've mostly done so under the file labeled "Why Not? Who knows?" The competition for those two final slots is where the action is right now and there are about twelve guys who, with the right combo of precursor support, smart campaign moves, media approval, film heat coattails, and/or old fashioned luck could still pull it off. Any of the 12 who aren't out there fighting for it are, frankly, crazy.

Eddie at an AMPAS screening of THEORY OF EVERYTHINGBut, jumping ahead... who will win?

On twitter today I was briefly discussing this with Kris & Jenelle and found them both sympathetic to my notion that Redmayne has a rather underdiscussed but considerable advantage in that he is enormously charming in person. When races are tight, charm counts for a lot. I've seen him in public thrice, met him once, and this charm is highly visible. What's more his charm never tilts toward cockiness but toward genuine-feeling humility. That's quite a trick if you stop to think about how actors build successful careers...

Enormous self-confidence is a key ingredient in big careers. The humility is also a very good trick if you're a young male actor in a town that prefers their male actors to be firmly established before they're worthy of large honors. Too cocky and people think 'you haven't earned it yet, upstart!'

I'm currently of the belief that Eddie Redmayne will win though I know a lot of people, like Daniel who I also spoke with on twitter today, think this is crazy and that he's too young and underfamous for Oscar's Kind of Hollywood annual prize. Daniel's contention, which I'm sure is shared by many, is that Daniel Day Lewis -- the most common reference point for a Redmayne win since DDL was Redmayne's same age and also played a severely disabled man who made impressive contributions to the world -- was considerably more acclaimed and famous then than Redmayne is now when he won.

I'm hear to argue, as someone who lived through the rise of DDL and was there from the ground floor, that this is not really the case.

Daniel at Eddie's age

Like Redmayne now, Daniel Day-Lewis had fans before his Oscar win but he wasn't anything like a household name. He had won early critical plaudits but, here's the long forgotten point, they did not come from one defining performance. Most of the enthusiasm about his future stemmed from the totally coincidental fact that My Beautiful Laundrette and A Room With a View opened in US arthouses within three weeks of each other in the spring of 1986. Back then, without the internet, things didn't happen instantaneously and as the year progressed more people began to realize that sexy dangerous gay punk Johnny and stuffy offputting intellectual Cecil were played by the same actor and they were frankly, and with good reason, kind of freaked out about it. I saw both performances that spring (I snuck to Laundrette because it was gay and my parents would have never let me see it and I saw the Merchant/Ivory with my parents) and I couldn't believe it either. By the end of the year everyone realized that there was a new chameleon in town but this did not result in major awards traction nor major media coverage. He won the NBR and the NYFCC for both performances, one of those shared awards to honor an actor having a good year, but in both cases he wasn't the chief takeaway from the film and no larger awards followed. His buzz was entirely due to how different the characters were and the realization that "wow, this guy is an excellent actor". Other actors and elements of those films won Oscar and BAFTA heat. DDL followed up that double whammy but quiet breakthrough with two leading roles in Stars & Bars (which no one went to see) and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (which critics cared about but mostly for the actresses surrounding him.)

In short when Daniel Day-Lewis made his Oscar arrival with My Left Foot he was essentially a 32 year old sudden sensation that people already thought of as a respected actor based on previous work on stage, television and the big screen but not one individual performance who had led a few films (most notably My Beautiful Laundrette which won a small degree of Oscar attention) but who was best known for his participation in a previous Best Picture nominee (A Room With a View) which won 8 Oscar nominations including two for his co-stars (not him) and 3 Oscar wins. But he was not in anyway, already an iconic hugely beloved star or even the consensus choice of Best Actor of His Generation. Time has a way of altering perceptions fo the past to conform to current truths but Daniel Day-Lewis was not yet DANIEL DAY-LEWIS at the time if you know what I mean.

Which is, roughly speaking, exactly where we are in the career of Eddie Redmayne. He is 32 years old and already respected as an actor based on previous work (including a Tony Award) on stage, television, and screen but no defining role yet who has led a few films (most notably My Week With Marilyn which won some Oscar attention) and is best known for delivering an acclaimed performance in a Best Picture nominee (Les Misérables) which won 8 nominations including two for his co-stars (not him) and 3 Oscar wins.

Eddie's first big showbiz prize: The Tony. Can Oscar follow?I don't mean to suggest that My Week With Marilyn and Les Miserables are future classics in the way that My Beautiful Laundrette and A Room With a View became but the similarities in the careers to date are kind of spooky- crazy if you ask me.

Were Eddie to win the Oscar he'd be a young winner but not "too" young as many on the internet have claimed. Redmayne turns 33 the week before Oscar nominations so if he does win he'd be older for his historic moment than past recipients by the names of Adrien Brody, Richard Dreyfus, Nicolas Cage, Jimmy Stewart, Maximilian Schell, Marlon Brando, and Daniel Day-Lewis. Whether or not Eddie Redmayne can have the kind of future that Daniel Day-Lewis enjoyed as he entered his Jesus year (33) remains to be seen but Eddie's off to a pretty grand start.

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