When it comes time for the Best Actor and Best Actress Academy Awards, it pays to reinvent yourself.
So far this year, the frontrunners are dramatic leads played by actors known for their comic genius. There’s Robin Williams in One Hour Photo. There’s Jennifer Aniston in The Good Girl. Heck, even Adam Sandler is being touted for his role in Punch-Drunk Love.
There’s still plenty of time for others to deliver a performance that will put Oscar gold in their hands next March. Here’s the run-down.
The Actors
Who We’ve Seen So Far
Robin Williams: In One Hour Photo, Williams‘ growing malevolence as a photo processing guy on the edge should give this usually funny guy another shot at the Oscar. Just rein in his exuberance he can be Oscar-worthy anytime (hence his win for supporting actor for Good Will Hunting).
Adam Sandler: Sandler harnesses the laughs for full effect in Punch-Drunk Love, playing an ultra-shy oddball who finds love for the first time. OK, maybe it isn’t as weird as it first seemed to say “Sandler” and “Oscar” in the same sentence.
Greg Kinnear: Also in the “Who would have thunk it” category, who would have believed a Talk Soup host would get as far as Greg Kinnear has? Amazing though it seems, Kinnear may be headed down a dark, twisted path to Oscar glory with his performance in Auto Focus. He had to expose more than just his skin playing the real-life Hogan’s Heroes actor Bob Crane, an alleged sex addict who was eventually bludgeoned to death.
Willem Dafoe: A two-time nominee in the supporting category, Dafoe may make the list again for his performance as Crane’s sicko partner-in-video-sex-games John Carpenter in Auto Focus. There’s more than a slight chance, however, that the whole movie might be too dark for the Academy.
Tom Hanks: On the more likely side, Hanks’ role as Irish hit man Michael Sullivan in Road to Perdition may give this talented actor his sixth Oscar nomination. He also co-stars in Catch Me If You Can as the FBI agent who finally tracks down con man Abagnale. After his back-to-back Best Actor wins for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, the man aspiring actors most want to emulate could end up in a double nomination scenario.
Paul Newman: This veteran actor might get a supporting nod for his performance in Perdition as Sullivan’s mob boss and surrogate father. The Academy loves to see older actors come out of the woodwork and give the performance of a lifetime. Remember James Coburn‘s win for supporting actor in Affliction? Or Jack Palance‘s win with City Slickers? Newman has a better-than-good chance.
Joaquin Phoenix: Phoenix gives a studied performance as the caring brother in Signs; it’s one of the young actor’s best to date, and it could earn him another nod in the supporting category (his first was for his role as Commodus in Gladiator).
Alfred Molina: In Frida, the underrated Molina plays Mexican artist Diego Rivera, whose rocky marriage to painter Frida Kahlo was legendary. Playing this iconic character may finally give Molina his chance at the gold.
Who’s Coming Up
Leonardo DiCaprio: Young DiCaprio finds himself a candidate for not one but two potential Oscar nominations for Best Actor. In Gangs of New York, he plays a man trying to avenge his father’s death on the mean streets of 1860s New York. Then in Steven Spielberg‘s Catch Me If You Can he plays real-life con artist Frank Abagnale, Jr., the youngest person to ever make the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List. Hope he doesn’t cancel himself out.
Daniel Day-Lewis: Along with his co-star DiCaprio, the ever-changing Day-Lewis, who’s been out of the limelight since 1997’s The Boxer, comes back full force in Gangs as the Irishman affectionately known on the streets of New York as Billy the Butcher. His chances of snagging a nomination are worth betting on.
Elijah Wood: Maybe this time some of the boys from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers will get a shot at Oscar accolades instead of Ian McKellen, who was the sole acting nominee from last year’s Fellowship of the Ring. First dibs to make it to the Oscar list? Wood, whose Frodo Baggins gets a little meaner under the influence of the evil Ring he’s been toting around.
Jack Nicholson: This top-notch actor, who keeps getting better with age, may be looking at Oscar number four on his shelf; the word on the street is that Nicholson gives a tremendous performance in About Schmidt, playing the burnt-out shell of man making his way back from the depths of despair.
Long Shots: Kieran Culkin‘s tortured performance as the teenage Igby in the twisted Igby Goes Down should get recognized for its brilliance, but considering the actor’s young age, it’s doubtful. Sam Rockwell, another highly underrated actor, plays Chuck Barris in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, George Clooney‘s directorial debut. Rockwell‘s character claims he was a TV host/game show producer by day and a CIA assassin by night. There’s also a possible nod in the offing for Adrien Brody in The Pianist, a biopic about famed Polish pianist and composer Wladyslaw Szpilman, who must survive the Nazis during WWII.
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The Actresses
Who We’ve Seen So Far
Jennifer Aniston: Long the golden girl of TV aficionados, Aniston now has a pretty good chance to make a name for herself in the movies. Her understated turn in The Good Girl as a bored wife looking for a way out of her drab existence has touched a nerve with critics and audiences alike. She could very well be placing an Oscar next to her newly won Emmy (for her hilarious Rachel in Friends). Watch out Helen Hunt.
Diane Lane: Lane is another enjoyable actress who’s never gotten the chance to do something really meaty, but that’s all changed with her performance in Adrian Lyne‘s Unfaithful, where Lane plays a married woman who unexpectedly begins an affair with a hunky Frenchman, not because she is bored with her husband but just because. It’s certainly the best showing of her career and could get noticed.
Salma Hayek: Hayek stands a good chance of getting her first Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo in Frida, more for her gutsy determination in bringing the story of this eclectic painter to the screen than anything else–though growing her eyebrows together has to count for something.
Emily Watson: Watson put in two great performances this year, playing a blind woman who almost straightens out a serial killer in Red Dragon and the woman who almost makes Adam Sandler get over his odd ways in Punch-Drunk Love. My bet is she’ll get a supporting nod from Red Dragon because making a psychopath look sympathetic takes some doing.
Susan Sarandon: Sarandon was, as always, good in the many films she made this year (The Banger Sisters, Moonlight Mile), but my guess is she’ll snag a supporting nod for her extremely tense mother in the dark Igby Goes Down.
Michelle Pfeiffer: Another high profile performance as a psycho mom came from Pfeiffer, whose fierce portrayal of a woman who controls her daughter (even from prison) in the otherwise sappy White Oleander could make her an Oscar favorite.
Renee Zellweger: In Oleander Zellweger turns in an Oscar-worthy supporting performance as a fragile woman trying to give a little love to Pfeiffer’s daughter, but Zellweger‘s main shot at the nomination will come from the splashy Chicago, due out in December. If you can act, sing and dance–well, in this day and age, that’s unheard of, so she’s bound to get noticed. She’s also one of the few actresses this year who have multiple chances to get their names on the list, and all early indications point to at least one nomination for this little Texan actress.
Who’s Coming Up
Julianne Moore: Joining Zellweger on the two-time list is veteran actress Moore. She is getting accolades for her performance in the indie Far From Heaven, where she plays a 1950s wife and mother who does a little free-thinking of her own. She plays a similar role in The Hours, this time as a pregnant and depressed wife in the ’50s who finds solace in reading Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway.
Meryl Streep: Streep is back from an extended hiatus with a powerful two-punch line-up. (Welcome back, Meryl!) In Adaptation, she plays the author of a book that character Charlie Kaufman is trying to adapt to the screen, and she gets a little more involved with the screenwriter than is strictly necessary. But the performance that has the Academy all a-quiver is her turn as a modern-day lesbian, whose nickname is “Mrs. Dalloway,” in The Hours.
Nicole Kidman: Leaving Tom Cruise seems to be the best thing Kidman could have done for her career. Last year, she had a prominent spot on the Oscar list for her turn as the doomed courtesan Satine in the musical Moulin Rouge, but apparently this year she’s going to blow everyone away with her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in The Hours. Kidman is virtually unrecognizable under a prosthetic nose, and she completely dissolves herself into the character as Woolf struggles to write Mrs. Dalloway. This could be the big one for the red-headed beauty.
