Best actor serves up the last vestige of suspense in the acting Oscar races. It’s been a hard-fought category throughout the season – at the nominations stage, it was a veritable bloodbath, with at least 10 perfectly conceivable contenders vying for half that number of slots.
And the award goes to Eddie Redmayne
He has already emerged the victor in the British biopic duel against Benedict Cumberbatch. His inhabitation of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything is both touching and impressively fastidious, but it could also have been conceived in some kind of Oscar frontrunner laboratory.
Every box is ticked: playing a famous, noble household name, mastering the tricky physical and verbal tics of a disability, ageing and transforming considerably on screen, while remaining consistently affable and attractive off it, where he’s been ever-present on the publicity circuit.
All that, and he’s genuinely good in James Marsh’s well-liked, profitable best picture nominee: that formula that has already earned him a Golden Globe, a Bafta and a Screen Actors Guild award. The last actor to nab that holy trinity and lose the Oscar was Russell Crowe in 2002; with no word of Redmayne assaulting and threatening any backstage staff at the Baftas, it’s hard to bet against him.
Lifetime Oscar nominations: 1
His other The Theory of Everything wins: Won best leading actor Golden Globe, BAFTA, Screen Actor’s Guild Award
Meet the nominees...
Steve Carell
Some wags have suggested that Foxcatcher’s nominations for best actor and best makeup should have been granted in tandem: for many, the chief memory of Carell’s brittle, spookily funny turn as psychotic multi-millionaire and self-styled wrestling coach John du Pont will be of the prosthetic hooter adorning (or obscuring) the sitcom star’s face.
Yes, we all know the Academy’s weakness for so-called “transformative” work, and for primarily comic actors proving their dramatic chops. Yet it’d be selling Carell short to dismiss his performance as a naked Oscar play: it’s such a strange, insidious interpretation (beginning with that high, rusty vocal tone) that it could easily have turned off voters entirely.
Carell’s buzz has dwindled since the film’s Cannes premiere last spring; when Bafta overrode his campaign and nominated him in the supporting race, many wondered if he should have targeted that award to begin with. But he’d have been an also-ran there, too: despite five nominations, Foxcatcher just isn’t a film the industry has taken to its heart.
Lifetime Oscar nominations: 1
His other Foxcatcher wins: Nominated for Golden Globe, Bafta, Screen Actors Guild
Benedict Cumberbatch
Back in September, when The Imitation Game was riding high on its Toronto festival triumph and Cumberbatch had just scooped an Emmy for Sherlock, the Brit was regarded as the best actor frontrunner.
Now, despite the Alan Turing biopic’s popularity and the internet’s ongoing Cumberbatch mania, he’s very much on the “happy to be nominated” bench. His loss of momentum is tied into that of the film itself, which has racked up nominations throughout the season, but has consistently come up empty on prizegiving night.
The ongoing controversy over the film’s gauzy treatment of Turing’s sexuality can’t have helped, and the storm in a teacup over Cumberbatch’s misuse of a racial epithet wouldn’t have been welcomed by his publicity team either. But perhaps it’s just that the performance itself doesn’t seem the greatest stretch for an actor already amply rewarded for playing a socially inept genius on the small screen; it’s adept and intelligent, but not the grabby tour de force that tends to come out on top here.
Lifetime Oscar nominations: 1
His other The Imitation Game wins: Nominated for Golden Globe, Bafta, Screen Actors Guild
Michael Keaton
Something tells me this race isn’t quite as tidily cut-and-dried as the precursors seem to suggest — with not one but two potential spoilers lying in wait. Indeed, until Redmayne’s Guild win, many pundits were predicting Keaton to emerge victorious, thereby landing Birdman its one major trophy.
Over the last couple of weeks, that consensus projection has been reversed, with the Broadway black comedy now tipped to win best picture, while Keaton has fallen back in his own category. One might question the wisdom of this: if a lot of Academy members are enamoured of this highly performance-focused film, wouldn’t they extend that support to its star?
Keaton has a lot going for him besides: at 63, the Golden Globe comedy champ is the most senior of the nominees by over a decade, and is riding a comeback narrative that his voting peers may find compelling. (Then again, they never paid him much attention in his prime.) And while he’s playing the only fictional figure in the field, the character of Riggan Thomson — an insecure, success-starved actor just trying to stay in the game — might be the one that Academy members recognise most intimately.
Lifetime Oscar nominations: 1
His other Birdman wins: Won Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor, Comedy or Musical, won Screen Actors Guild ensemble award
Bradley Cooper
The wild card. It’s all but impossible to say how well-placed he is in this race, since American Sniper’s late-surging campaign kept him out of the precursors: he may not have won at the Baftas, the SAGs or the Globes, but crucially, he didn’t lose at them either. Meanwhile, Cooper’s vehicle has taken off like a hot rod in the weeks following the nominations.
Riding a wave of controversy and cleverly-milked patriotic sentiment that isn’t necessarily present in this politically measured film, Sniper has taken a stunning $285 million in the US — not just dwarfing its rivals, but threatening The Hunger Games: Mockingjay for the title of the highest-grossing 2014 release stateside.
Its film-of-the-moment status could well persuade voters that it needs a major win, but Cooper’s muscular, psychologically shaded performance is no mere coat-tailer: as morally conflicted sharp-shooter Chris Kyle, he’s a driving factor behind the film’s success.
Furthermore, Cooper’s not just the category’s only previous nominee; he’s landed nominations in three consecutive years — the first actor to do so since his former girlfriend Renee Zellweger (whose persistence was rewarded on her third attempt) eleven years ago.
While few would have guessed even five years ago that the slick star of The Hangover would now be a three-time Oscar nominee — four, if you count his producing nod for Sniper — Cooper has earned this turnaround. If there’s one bookie-defying upset brewing for next Sunday, this is it.
Lifetime Oscar nominations: 4 (American Sniper, best actor and best picture, as a producer; American Hustle, best supporting actor; Silver Linings Playbook, best actor).
His other American Sniper wins: None.
