"The Client" and Populist Oscar Choices in Acting

by Nathaniel R

Today is the 25th anniversary of the release of The Client which was a big sleeper success in its summer, ending the year as the 13th highest grossing movie of 1994. Only that number wasn't bad luck since Susan Sarandon netted a Best Actress nomination for the legal drama. That nomination kept her momentum as "overdue for a win" going strong until the next year when she won the Oscar for something in Oscar's more typical wheelhouse, Dead Man Walking (1995) an issue drama based on a true story.

So let's discuss something no one talks about much. What are the lead acting nominations that would never have happened without the big hit status for the movies that housed them? This is NOT meant as a critique of the performances. Sometimes Oscar just needs to be convinced by enormous success to look at worthy pieces of acting within genres they take less seriously (their loss) or star vehicles they might not have stopped to mull over without all the general audience enthusiasm forcing the movie to be taken seriously... 

Let's only do the 1985 onward for the purposes of this list since that's when yours truly began to pay rapt attention to the  'who might be nominated?' discourse each year, a discourse that was much much quieter than it is now pre-internet. It's also inarguably true that the public moviegoing taste used to align more closely with Oscar tastes pre 1980s (so many Oscar dramas were massive hits in their years once you go back in time) so this would be harder to suss out before then. But we think the following performances would not have been Oscar-blessed if the movies weren't big hits.

You'll notice that Meryl is not here for Prada because history has proven, time and again, that Streep doesn't need the movie to be successful to be nominated. Also Julia Roberts is not here for Pretty Woman, this was a judgment call about which I kept waffling. You could probably argue that she would not have been nominated but, on the other hand, she was a rising star who had just been nominated who happened to be playing hooker with a heart of gold back when Oscar still loved that 'type'.  

THEY WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN NOMINATED WITHOUT THEIR MOVIE BEING A HUGE HIT
(# = where the movie landed at the end of the year box office charts -- all of these movies were huge ass hits.) 

Actress

• 1986 Sigourney Weaver in Aliens (#7)
• 1990 Kathy Bates in Misery (#19)
• 1994 Susan Sarandon in The Client (#13)
• 1996 Kristin Scott Thomas in The English Patient (#19) - Another gray area but if the movie hadn't proven a phenomenon we suspect that it would have only been Fiennes & Binoche... It was a competitive year
• 2003 Diane Keaton in Something's Gotta Give (#16)
• 2009 Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side (#8)
• 2014 Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl (#18)

Actor

• 1988 Tom Hanks in Big (#4) - A comedy. And it was released in June
• 1996 Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire (#4)
• 2000 Russell Crowe in Gladiator (#4) - Maybe you could argue he would have been nominated without it. But he would not have won. 
• 2003 Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (#3) - this one is very very very obvious but also the performance was genius (too bad he tarnished it with all those phoned-in reprises) so we're thrilled that it happened
• 2012 Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook (#23)
  Another iffy choice... but we think this applies because men so rarely get nominated for romantic comedies. 
• 2015 Matt Damon in The Martian (#8)
• 2017 Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out ($15)

Agree? Disagree? What would you remove or replace it with? And, which performances wouldn't have won without their commercial succcess even if the nomination was probably always going to happen? 

 

Comments

[Miguel]

Haven’t seen a true star-making performance since Julia’s in Pretty Woman. Also as good as Geoffrey Rush was in Shine, Tom Cruise as Jerry Maguire would’ve gotten my vote. We often take for granted huge movie star performances in the film industry. Now that the last of the true movie stars are aging and this generation is lacking real movie stars, we long for the days when Julia, the Toms and Denzel ruled the summer blockbuster season - instead of Transformers 10...

[Jono]

I think Hunger Games propelled Jennifer Lawrence to big stardom, which appears to have unraveled for her due to personality, flops and Harvey. Agree that the modern era has no real movie stars, and we are exiting the silver era for cartoons and digital programming.

[Melchiades]

This year's Lady Cooper and Bradley Gaga in A Star is Born belongs to this list easy.

[Martin]

Fantastic idea - and quiet hard to separate from my personal taste (and I really can't)
... definitely would debate Bates & Pike as they were outstanding at their time... - maybe even Depp, not my fav - but bold genius
Loved Susan in The Client when I saw it again a few years ago ... entirely her movie.
'94 was a mellow year - I did care for Fosters Nell back then quiet a lot as it was different.

3 names that came up immediately and would need to add:
YALITZA APARICIO - Roma ... a nomination I will never ever understand nor .... acceeeeept
BRADLEY COOPER - American Sniper
SANDRA BULLOCK - The Blind Side / Gravity

WILL SMITH - The Pursuit of Happiness
Al PACINO - Scent of Woman
ROBERT DE NIRO - Cape Fear
MELANIE GRIFFITH - Working Girl
Maybe:
WINONA RYDER - Little Women
even: JOHN TRAVOLTA - Pulp Fiction
& HARRISON FORD - Witness

supporting ... just because I can ;-)
OCTAVIA SPENCER & RICHARD JENKINS - The Shape of Water
GLORIA STUART - Titanic
SYLVESTER STALLONE - Creed
BARKHAD ABDI - Captain Phillips
KATHLEEN QUINLAN / ED HARRIS - Apollo 13
DAN AYKROYD - Driving Miss Daisy
AMY IRVING - Yentl