Foreign Film Race Pt 5: "Hey, I know that face!"
"Everything u ever wanted to know about the foreign film category"
Pt 1 All the trailers (A-I) | Pt 2 All the trailers (J-Y)
Pt 3 Debuts | Pt 4 Female Directors
Pt 5. Actors You Know & Possibly Love
Successful actors really rack up the frequent flyer miles. Some pick up a second or third or fourth language and actually use those languages in their careers. Others merely stick to films in their native tongue but are magnetic or lucky enough to become well known all over the world.
So after surveying the 85 movies that are hoping to be nominated for this year's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, here are 12 actors you may already know (or at least recognize) who star in one or more of the submissions this time around...
Gael García Bernal made his feature film debut in the Oscar nominated Amores Perros (2000) and Oscar just kept right on gazing at him. As did we. To date he has starred in three Best Foreign Language Film nominees (Amores Perros, The Crime of Father Amaro, and No) and three other Oscar nominated films (Y Tu Mama Tambien, The Motorcycle Diaries, and Babel). He could add two more Academy stamped titles to that very impressive list this year since he headlines both the Chilean submission (Neruda, reviewed) and the Mexican submission (Desierto, which just opened in US theaters).
Fionnula Flanagan has been working in Irish, British and US TV and film since the mid 1960s and has won an Emmy (for the 1970s miniseries Rich Man Poor Man) as well as a lifetime achievement prize at the Irish Film and Television Awards over the course of her long career. She won lots of new fans and a Saturn Award for her role as the spooky housekeeper in The Others (2001) and this year she co-stars in the interlocking stories of Little Secrets, the Brazilian Oscar submission.
Ten more famiiar faces after the jump...