With lovelorn cowboys, tortured singers, insecure writers, no-nonsense newsmen, beautiful geishas, gutsy transsexuals and the sexually harassed, this year is chock-full of diverse and riveting Best Actor and Best Actress possibilities. Here’s a rundown of likely contenders whose excellent performances just might put Oscar gold in their hands in March.
The Actors
George Clooney, Syriana
Although Syriana is an ensemble affair revolving around the oil industry, Clooney clearly stands out. Gaining some 30 pounds and sporting a thick beard, Clooney gives a weighty performance–both figuratively and literally–as a veteran CIA operative working in the oil-rich Middle East. And nothing impresses Academy voters more than when you drastically change your appearance for a role (see Felicity Huffman below).
Jake Gyllenhaal, Jarhead
It’s a tough call for Gyllenhaal. He’s given two very fine performances this year–one as a jaded Marine in Jarhead, the other as a cowboy looking for love in all the wrong places in Brokeback Mountain. But the two could cancel him out of a shot at an Oscar. If he does get noticed, we think it’ll be for his slightly psychotic, pumped-up turn in Jarhead. If not, the talented Gyllenhaal has plenty of time to get back up there again.
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
Everyone is talking about Hoffman’s performance as the effeminate author during the most prolific time of his career, when he wrote his seminal nonfiction novel In Cold Blood. Although slightly taller than the real Truman Capote, Hoffman didn’t think he was right for the part at first. But he nails all of Capote’s affectations–the lisp, the high-pitched, slow Southern drawl–and he painstakingly details the author’s crippling insecurities. It’s a tour de force for the always quirky and endlessly entertaining Hoffman–and a no-brainer addition to the Best Actor list.
Terrence Howard, Hustle & Flow
All we can say is the Academy just better remember Terrence Howard this year. The man has been a one-man acting machine, giving one stirring, heart-wrenching performance after another in films such as Crash and Hustle & Flow, as well as making some mediocre films a little bit better, such as Four Brothers and Get Rich or Die Tryin’. For our money, though, his tough-yet-vulnerable, single-minded pimp-turned-rap singer in Hustle & Flow is the clear choice.
Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
Ledger is the real reason Gyllenhaal stands a better chance at getting a nod for Jarhead. The Aussie actor’s portrayal of an inexpressive cowboy, whose love for another man nearly ruins his life, is simply heart-wrenching. Any preconceived notions we had about Ledger’s pretty-boy status are completely thrown out the window. Here’s hoping an Oscar nod will finally get him the proper scripts he deserves.
Joaquin Phoenix, Walk the Line
Musician biopics do an actor good. Especially when they have to learn how to sing and play the guitar (or a piano or any other instrument) in a way to make us believe we are watching the real star in action. Of course, Jamie Foxx blew us all away last year as Ray Charles–and deservedly won the Oscar. Now, it’s Phoenix’s turn. Not only is his tortured performance as the late, great Johnny Cash a stroke of genius, it also seems to have come from some deep, dark place in Phoenix’s own tormented soul. The Academy just eats that stuff up.
David Strathairn, Good Night, and Good Luck
It’s always refreshing to see a great character actor get his due. Chris Cooper got it when he won his Oscar for Adaptation. Now, we have Strathairn. He’s quietly turned in strong performances his whole career, either as a topnotch supporting player in big-budget movies (The Firm, L.A. Confidential) or in little-seen indies (Passion Fish, Blue Car). But with Good Night, the actor takes the lead and radiates as legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow, who faced down would-be witch-hunter Sen. Joseph McCarthy and stood up for our constitutional rights. Oscar should come calling.
Other possibilities: Russell Crowe’s determined boxer in Cinderella Man; Jeff Daniels as a conflicted father in The Squid and the Whale; Ralph Fiennes, agonizing over his wife’s murder, in The Constant Gardener; Tommy Lee Jones’ stalwart ranch hand in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada; Viggo Mortensen, as a man with a dark past in A History of Violence; and Cillian Murphy’s transvestite in Breakfast on Pluto.
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The Actresses
Judi Dench, Mrs. Henderson Presents
Dame Judi Dench can chew up the scenery like no other actress. Honestly, who else could have won an Oscar with only roughly 15 minutes of screen time (as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love)? The great British actress is indeed an Academy darling–and playing a feisty London theater owner during World War II, who defies conventions and puts on all-nude revues, is just a role Academy voters love to honor.
Felicity Huffman, Transamerica
Huffman may play a Desperate housewife on TV, even winning an Emmy for it, but there’s no denying this actress has the chops, no matter what medium she plays in. As Bree, Transamerica’s main player, think Monster’s Charlize Theron and Boys Don’t Cry’s Hilary Swank, except Huffman is a woman playing a man who wants to be a woman. She is stunningly gutsy as a transsexual–on his, um, her last leg towards a total transgender transformation–who must come to terms with a son she once fathered. Oops.
Keira Knightley, Pride and Prejudice
The one thing Knightley can do well is play vibrant woman. With her breakthrough performance in Bend It Like Beckham, she’s given us a series of freethinking women, from her brave lass in Pirates of the Caribbean to her shotgun-totin’ bounty hunter in Domino. And in Pride, the bright-eyed actress breathes new life into Jane Austen’s highly romantic novel, playing the heroine with enough spunk to buck her 19th century mores. Knightley could very well be the Gwyneth Paltrow of this year’s Oscar contenders.
Charlize Theron, North Country
OK, Theron’s performance as a woman who successfully wins the first class-action sexual harassment suit against her male coworkers at an iron mine may not be the same caliber as her Oscar-winning turn as a lesbian serial killer, but it’s still something to admire. The Academy also love those small-town female characters who beat men at their own game, i.e. Sally Field in Norma Rae and Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich, and usually reward accordingly.
Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line
People forget Witherspoon can go way beyond playing ditzy blondes or romantic comedy foils. Remember the darkly comedic Election? So it doesn’t come as any great surprise the actress was able to transform into country singer June Carter, Johnny Cash’s tough-love friend who became his lifelong love. It’s almost as if Witherspoon was born to play the part, especially when she and Phoenix’s Cash deliver electrifying, Oscar-clip worthy duets. Let’s just hope Witherspoon keeps up the more serious trend.
Ziyi Zhang, Memoirs of a Geisha
Ziyi may have wowed us in films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers, but the fact she had to master the English language for Geisha alone should give her a deserved nod. Of course, there’s much more to it than that. Playing the young Japanese woman who is taken from her home at a tender age and turned into a legendary geisha, only to then fall in love with an unattainable man, makes her performance all the more tragic. And period-costumed tragedy almost always gets Oscar’s attention.
Other possibilities: Joan Allen’s bitter mother in Upside of Anger Claire Danes as a simple Shopgirl with complex needs; Gwyneth Paltrow’s miserable math genius in Proof; and Rachel Weisz, as an intrepid human activist, in The Constant Gardener.
Click here for our Best Picture contenders.
