The Most Confusing Acting Categories of the Past
Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 2:07PM by Eurocheese
NINE women have received mainstream precursor support this year for Best Supporting Actress. Somethings gotta give.
If anyone you know is telling you they know exactly what will happen when the nominees for Supporting Actress are announced on Monday, you should also ask them for a set of winning lottery numbers. You want to know how many actresses have scored the complete quartet of Golden Globe, SAG, Critics Choice and BAFTA nominations in Supporting this season? That would be zero. Maria Bakalova showed up at all four awards for a raunchy comedy, arguably the least Oscary of all genres, but even she landed in lead at the Globes. I honestly have no idea who’s getting in or who’s winning the category… and I love the confusion.
For everyone trying to put together their predictions for nomination morning, let’s look at how some other bizarre precursors shook out, choosing one year to represent each of the four categories. Maybe this will give us a clue as to the current Best Supporting Actress race...
1988 Supporting Actress
This was well before my own awards obsession and before we had tea leaves from SAG and the Critics Choice Awards. Even so, this was a strange year. Sigourney Weaver’s performance in Working Girl took the Golden Globe, and it was the only Globe nomination that repeated at the Oscars; the unlucky others were Sonia Braga in Moon Over Parador, Barbara Hershey in Last Temptation fo Christ, Lena Olin in the Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Diane Venora for Bird... and all but Braga were in films that did score at least one other Oscar nomination. BAFTA had no crossover, though the next year they played catch up by awarding Michelle Pfeiffer in this category for Dangerous Liaisons (which was 1988 in the US). Geena Davis, Joan Cusack and Frances McDormand all showed up at Oscar without those distinctions, and of course Davis went home with the win. She hadn’t picked up any critics awards before Oscar night either.
1998 Actor
Both SAG and BAFTA matched Oscar by picking Roberto Benigni for their Best Actor winner, and SAG matched four of the five eventual nominees. So why would this year be confusing? Well, the Globe winners (Jim Carrey for The Truman Show and Oscar darling Michael Caine for Little Voice) received no love on nomination morning, and SAG nominee Fiennes in the eventual Best Picture winner was also absent. Ed Norton made the cut with only a few minor critics prizes to his name. I’d say this is the acting category that typically gives us the fewest surprises, but in this year, it had a few tricks up its sleeve.
2003 Actress
Yes, Golden Globe winners Charlize Theron and Diane Keaton made it to nomination morning, but none of the other seven Globe Actress nominees did. Scarlett Johansson, who was double nominated at both the Globes and BAFTA (where she won), didn’t land a single nomination. Uma Thurman scored nominations at both award shows as well, and still didn’t make it in. Instead, Keisha Castle-Hughes, whose biggest precursor was a Supporting Actress nomination at SAG, and Samantha Morton, a Critics Choice nominee, took their places. The winning role was not a surprise, but the nominee slate was definitely unexpected. (2012 landed a similar double surprise with its oldest/youngest nominees ever in Emmanuelle Riva and Quvenzhane Wallis.)
2015 Supporting Actor
I don’t remember this standing out as an odd category at the time, mostly because the narrative was that Stallone was winning for Creed, but Rylance ended up taking it for Bridge of Spies. Aside from that story, though, do we remember that both the Globes and SAG only matched two of the eventual nominees? Idris Elba (Beasts of No Nation) showed up everywhere except Critics Choice, plus he won the SAG, but still no Oscar nomination. Michael Shannon (99 Homes) had Globe, Critics Choice and SAG nods, but still missed. Jacob Tremblay (Room), Paul Dano (Love & Mercy) and Benicio del Toro (Sicario) all arguably had more traction than eventual nominee Tom Hardy (The Revenant), who only had a Critics Choice notice. Of course, surprise nominations tend to make more sense in retrospect when they come from strong Best Picture contenders (hi there, Marina de Tavira).
Does this season's Supporting Actress confusion put it among these outliers?
I’d say so. You can also argue that the awards sticking to the “expected choices” is less fun anyway. In that spirit, remember how much more wild SAG’s early years were (the 1990s).
Without looking, do you know which of these five actors in each category below (none of whom were Oscar nominated) was not a SAG nominee in their year?
Best Actor:
- Jim Carrey for Man on the Moon
- Joseph Fiennes for Shakespeare in Love
- Harrison Ford for Sabrina
- Phillip Seymour Hoffman for Flawless
- James Earl Jones for Cry, the Beloved Country
Best Actress:
- Pam Grier for Jackie Brown
- Julianne Moore for An Ideal Husband
- Meg Ryan for When a Man Loves a Woman
- Meryl Streep for The River Wild
- Robin Wright for She’s So Lovely
Best Supporting Actor:
- Hank Azaria for The Birdcage
- Kevin Bacon for Murder in the First
- Billy Connolly for Mrs. Brown
- Nathan Lane for The Birdcage
- Christopher Plummer for The Insider
Best Supporting Actress:
- Stockard Channing for Smoke
- Anjelica Huston for The Crossing Guard
- Julianne Moore for Magnolia
- Kyra Sedgwick for Something to Talk About
- Marisa Tomei for Unhook the Stars
Which of the acting categories this season do you suspect no one will predict correctly?
Reader Comments (43)
Timing might be a factor in getting nominated this year. That benefits Fishback who is in a film that just came out, has buzz, and that people will watch. Also Foster happened to win ( and give a pretty good off the cuff speech) just before voting started. Timing might push them both with voters and perhaps nominations next week.
But honestly who knows? This has been the most unpredictable season in a long time. We might even get a crazy surprise like Aubrey Plaza.
I am just going crazy with Supporting Actress...
Locks? NONE
Likely?
Bakalova - frontrunner for the win, if any.
The nominees?
Close
Fishback
Foster
Youn
Spoilers? In order?
Colman
Seyfried
Zengel
Burstyn
And I don't discard ANYONE coming out from nowhere and getting in!
The only one I feel sure about is Close as a nominee (we'll worry about a win later) and yet it's also easy to see her as the surprise snub. It's fascinating!
but i wanna talk about these years you've selected. of course 2003 bst actress is THE craziest best actress race.... just nothing ever settled all season except that Theron & Keaton were leading... but i'm most fascinated by the selection of 1988 in supporting actress. It's true that there wasn't much agreement but i also find it interesting that it looks so obvious in retrospect (as many Oscar races do). It's also fun/weird that it was such a big haired "brunette" year... look at the images... and then 2003 best actress is so many blondes with the same-ish haircuts. Funny how these things happen.
as to how these lessons affect the results this yeaer. Tough to say. Fishback might be in the movie with the most momentum and best picture strength (which helped the eventuall 88 nominees -- But BAFTA might not mean much this year since it was juried. And 'best picture strength' could theoretically also help Seyfried, Zengel, Youn, and Colman. It's so funny that the two that feel like the leaders are the ones whose movies feel like Best Picture longshots (Bakalova & Close)
Ford, Moore, Plummer, Sedgwick?
This year's precursors are all over the place - and more exciting because of it!
Nathaniel: Regarding the haircuts, I can't help feeling that it's films showing the fashions of the time they were made in, irrespective of subject matter or period!
I'd be delighted if these names were announced: Allison Brie, Olivia Colman, Dominique Fishback, Dianne Wiest and Yuh-jung Youn.
(Jodie Foster and Ye-ri Han would replace two of those names, but to me they're leads: The Mauritanian is a three-headed narrative and Minari, if it has any leads, then the two parents.)
PS. Seeing McDormand looking so "traditionally" hot in that image above is jarring.
1988 Supporting Actress was even weirder than you report. Besides Diane Venora, who had also won the New York Film Critics Award, the Academy ignored the National Society of Film Critics winner Mercedes Ruehl (Married to the Mob), and the Los Angeles Film Critics winner Genevieve Bujold (Dead Ringers/The Moderns), which, along with the Golden Globes, were pretty much the only precursors at the time.
And I just checked, the BAFTA award that year went to Judi Dench for A Handful of Dust, and the only other nominee eligible was Maria Aitken (A Fish Called Wanda). Both films received nominations in other categories, and neither were nominated. We could even throw in Peggy Ashcroft for Madame Souzatzka, nominated by BAFTA in 1989, but eligible in 1988 in the USA!
Can I just say how terrible The Accidental Tourist is, and Geena Davis is not that much better in it. That was totally the Oscar Sigourney should've won, and now she may never win. I seriously cannot fathom how anyone could look at all 5 of those performances and say that Geena Davis was the best among them.
I watch that Geena win on YouTube often she genuinely looks shocked everyone expected Weaver to prevail and then Jodie besting Siggy,I wonder what she thought that night,I read somewhere she was upset mostly for her parents.
Mairia Aiken is the sort of wacky nomination we used to get in the 80's from Bafta who had the good grace to give Sigourney her rightful 97 Best Supporting Actress trophy sorry Julianne lovers.
I think this years will be
Foster,Youn,Bakalova,Seyfried and Bursytn
I will suffer if Maria & Amanda were snubbed. The rest is welcome to fight for the other three spots, surprises included.
God, a Braga, Hershey, Olin, Venora, Weaver lineup would've been incredible, even though Moon Over Parador is nobody's best work. Of course the actual crop are distinguished too. But in terms of performance quality, the Globes lineup was so fabulous.
@Nathaniel
... given the momentum, I wouldn't call Borat a "longshot" for a Best Picture nomination, but the clear dark horse, after the Eddie, WGA and PGA nominations and the GG for Comedy.
I would add... If I was going to recall my Oscarwatch's "The Race" days... I'd rank the Best Picture contenders like this (for the nom)
1. Nomadland
2. The Trial of the Chicago 7
3. Minari
4. Promising Young Woman
5. Mank
6. One Night in Miami
7. Judas and the Black Messiah
8. News of the World
9. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
10. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
11. The Father
12. Sound of Metal
13. Soul
14. Da 5 Bloods
15. Another Round
16. First Cow
17. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
18. Palm Springs
19. Tenet
20. On the Rocks or anything else, literally.
To clarify...
Locks: 1-4
Possible 5-12
Longshots 13-20
I love that it's so unpredictable and I also hope Maria wins it all.
I love unpredictability as long as it doesn't involve Jared Leto getting in for "The Little Things."
The 2015 Supporting Actor race is so odd because, once Idris Elba wasn't nominated Rylance felt sort of inevitable. I always feel bad for Elba. I suspect that if his film came out one year later on streaming he'd be an easy Oscar winning, but that bias held him back.
The strangest thing about this year is that it feels like Box Office doesn't matter and buzz is hard to judge. We don't have reports about how much applause/love there was during screenings.
At this point, genre aside, Bakalova feels like a pretty sure thing given how much she has been pushed by every group. The only shock would be if she ends up in lead like Kiesha Castle-Hughes (which I don't think will happen). Colman feels like she's at the perfect moment in her career for this nomination, which will come for her work in her film, but also for being in one of the more zeitgiest-y TV shows of the moment.
I think this category will be the hardest to predict above maybe 2/5 nominees.
Colman a lock, and the only lock. The BAFTA miss is due to the juried category. BAFTA LOVES her.
I really believe there are four spots up for grabs, and I'd say the most likely nominees are:
Colman
Youn
Close
Seyfried
Foster (she peaked at just the right time with the GG win, and the BAFTA noms for the film show that it's well-liked)
Excited to see how this all shakes out!
Also, Samantha Morton is so great because, even though she's English, she just sort of crash lands into the Oscars without a BAFTA or SAG nomination. I'm still surprised she didn't make it in for the Messenger.
I love when this happens, even though it makes winning the Oscar pool that much more difficult. The set-in-stone nominees and winners of recent years have been so, so enervating.
1988 is a wonderful year, with great movies and amazing actresses at their best. It had the race that it deserved.
The one person I really want to get a nom this year is Youn. I loved her in Minari.
@Working stiff - I didn't even know that was her until I read your comment.
I don't think News of the World is getting nominated in best picture. Zengel still has a shot, but it's not assured at all.
Colman is in. I don't feel sure about anyone else.
I'm pretty sure these four were not nominated for SAG:
Harrison Ford for Sabrina
Julianne Moore for An Ideal Husband
Christopher Plummer for The Insider
Kyra Sedgwick for Something to Talk About
I also love how crazy best supporting actress is right now! Also wish more surprises at the other categories, like Rhada Blank for best actress.
@ MDA
Wild, right?
I liked it in the early days when the Golden Globes were just wacky!
Look at Golden Globe winning supporting performances that failed to be nominated for an Oscar
1952 Millard Mitchell in My Six Convicts
1952 Katy Jurado in High Noon
1956 Earl Holliman in The Rainmaker
1958 Hermoine Gingold in Gigi
1959 Stephen Boyd in Ben Hur
1965 Oscar Werner in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
1966 Richard Attenborough in The Sand Pebbles
1967 Richard Attenborough in Doctor Dolittle
1974 Karen Black in The Greta Gatsby
1975 Richard Benjamin in The Sunshine Boys
1976 Katherine Ross in Voyage of the Damned
Look at Oscar winning supporting performances that failed to be nominated for a Golden Globe
1959 Hugh Griffith in Ben Hur
1965 Martin Balsam in A Thousand Clowns
1965 Shelley Winters in A Patch of Blue
1966 Walter Matthau in The Fortune Cookie
1967 Estelle Parsons in Bonnie & Clyde
1968 Jack Albertson in The Subject was Roses
1970 Helen Hayes in Airport
1974 Robert De Niro in The Godfather Part II
1974 Ingrid Bergman in Murder on the Orient Express
1976 Beatrice Straight in Network
My predictions:
-Maria Bakalova/Borat-actors aren’t going to ignore this performance especially with a film that takes aim at Trump.
-Amanda Seyfriend/Mank-People might ‘love’ the production design and I think they’ll include her.
-Olivia Colman-the ‘British’ element.
-Youn/Minari-Kind’ve feel she’ll be this year’s trivia question for ‘Who received a surprise Supporting Actress nod for Roma?’
-Fishbank- politics.
As for spoilers: best shot is Foster-who would kick out Fishbank.
News of the World girl seems to have lost steam.
Close-the Razzies will be announced on Sunday...
"Without looking, do you know which of these five actors in each category below (none of whom were Oscar nominated) was not a SAG nominee in their year?"
Best Actor:
Harrison Ford for Sabrina (Golden Globe Nominee)
Best Actress:
Julianne Moore for An Ideal Husband (Golden Globe Nominee)
Best Supporting Actor:
Christopher Plummer for The Insider
Best Supporting Actress:
Kyra Sedgwick for Something to Talk About (Golden Globe Nominee)
I have a theory that the reason Sigourney lost in ‘88 was because voters were split on whether they wanted to give her the lead or supporting Oscar, and it resulted in her getting neither. But she was arguably the frontrunner in both categories at one point, and it’s pretty likely that she was the runner-up in both. Crazy how she doesn’t have an Oscar but she probably came THIS CLOSE to winning two in one night.
Close is winning the Oscar. Don't be a slut, obrigado.
@Paranoid Android, it's so funny how preferences are so different. I for one, like the movie and LOVE Geena Davis' performance. To me, she was far and away the correct victor, and it's one of the Oscars' most inspired and delightful choices - ala Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
As for Sigourney... I've never been a huge fan. The Working Girl role should have been way more fun than she made it, but I still understand her being the favorite given the odd combination of a cartoonishly juicy role + a BP contender. I certainly will never understand her being the 'favorite' at any point for Gorillas in the Mist. What a bore.
Sorry whoo, a recent rewatch of The Accidental Tourist had the film rise a little in estimation but Davis's performance fall. It's just a basic Manic Pixie Dream Girl role performed as best it could, but surely the year wasn't so weak that it was a deserved victory. Said as a huge Geena Davis fan.
Sounds like you are immune to Weaver's charms. She plays the Working Girl role very well, I enjoyed the tone of it. And Gorillas, what an intense powerhouse of a performance! Even if you rank her fifth I can't imagine not respecting an achievement most actresses dream to strike once in a lifetime.
It's been awhile since we've had an acting race as unpredictable as this year's for Supporting Actress. Very exciting.
To clarify I mean nominations wise. I've breathed in and read the mood in the air. Congratulations Close!
Razzie Worst Supporting Actress nominee:
Glenn Close – Hillbilly Elegy
Maddie Ziegler – Music
Wow. The worst movie of 2020 vs the worst movie of 2021!
If she can manage a nomination, I think Youn Yuh-jung is your winner; Minari is peaking at exactly the right time. And yet, her nomination doesn't even feel secure, and I could see her missing the final five. What a wild year!
I don't know who to predict at this point; no one feels safe. I would like to think that Glenn Close will be the surprise snub, but I still haven't shaken the horrible memory of her nomination for Albert Nobbs, so I won't hold my breath.
The Razzies are complete garbage. Get your deserved Oscar, Glenn! The haters don't mean shit to you and never will!!!
I think Oscar is going to stick to the expected choices, Bakalova, Close, Colman, Seyfried and Youn.
Sorry I mispoke. I meant get your makeup/sympathy/sorry for not awarding you sooner Oscar Glenn! I'm with Three Artful. Oscars should be based on careers and narratives, NOT best individual achievement of the calendar year!
2003 is such a Best Actress crime... Evan Rachel Wood, Uma Thurman, and probably Scarlett as well, should've made it in! Charlize was the only safe bet, and a deserved win.
Anyway... this year? I don't even feel the urge to predict. It's so wild that I'm just excited to see how the cookie crumbles.
2003
That year was both a mess and fascinating. Of the 10 women nominated for a GG in drama and musical/comedy, only two Theron and Keaton, were nominated for an Oscar.
Evan Rachel Wood, Uma Thurman, Cate Blanchett, Scarlett Johansson were so deserving. Morton and Watts were really good. Theron the clear fav
I would have nominated:
Evan Rachel Wood
Uma Thurman
Charlize Theron
Cate Blanchett
Samantha Morton