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McConaughey was great in Dallas Buyers Club, but Leo deserves this award!
Best Actor Oscar 2014
Which performance will be named Best Actor?
36 votes. You may not vote on this poll
This is the most difficult category this year.
It's going to be a battle between McConaughey, DiCaprio, and Ejiofor.
I'm leaning towards Leo finally winning an Oscar, but it would be cool if McConaughey wins it; he was brilliant all year long.
It's going to be a battle between McConaughey, DiCaprio, and Ejiofor.
I'm leaning towards Leo finally winning an Oscar, but it would be cool if McConaughey wins it; he was brilliant all year long.
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“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!” ~ Rocky Balboa
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Bruce Dern is terrific in Alexander Payne's Nebraska. It's a very understated, interior performance of a beaten man, and very un-Bruce Dern-like, in some respects. He came out of that Roger Corman group with Nicholson, Hopper, Peter Fonda, and had a handful of great roles in the 1970s, resulting in his only previous nomination, as Supporting Actor in Hal Ashby's Coming Home. Though his co-stars Jon Voight and Jane Fonda took home Oscars, he lost out to Christopher Walken in the other big Vietnam picture of that year, The Deer Hunter. But Dern could have also easily been nominated for his portrayal of the wilder, more scheming brother to Jack Nicholson in Bob Rafelson's The King of Marvin Gardens or at the center of Michael Ritchie's beauty pageant satire Smile.
In previous eras of The Academy Awards, on occasion you tended to see some of the acting awards go to what seemed like acknowledgements for their entire career in the business as much, if not more so, than the quality of the actual nominated performance. There aren't really any examples of this in recent years that come screaming out, but the quality of the performance plus his long career could give the 77-year-old Dern a little edge at the ballot box. And he is damn good in Nebraska.
Christian Bale is the only one of the five nominees who has actually won before, a few years ago for Best Supporting Actor in David O. Russell's The Fighter. And that is his only other nomination. Bale often transforms himself, physically, for his roles, though usually it is taking his body to the extreme limits in the other direction, as not only the drug-addicted ex-boxer he won the Oscar for, but even more alarmingly as a POW in Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn and the troubled man wasting away in Brad Anderson's The Machinist. In American Hustle he strips away his vanity again to play the pudgy con man with the epic comb-over. Will he go two-for-two with The Academy?
The thirty-nine-year-old DiCaprio is the man with the most nominations in this field, with The Wolf of Wall Street being his fourth, having gotten previous nods for Supporting Actor in What's Eating Gilbert Grape? and Best Actor in The Aviator and Blood Diamond. But, despite being an incredibly good-looking, super famous movie star who grew up in the spotlight without becoming a burn-out or douchebag, who has linked up with Martin Scorsese in now five films as well as Tarantino and Nolan and Eastwood and Spielberg, being in both blockbusters and prestige pictures, and starring in two films that have won Best Picture...he hasn't won one. Not yet, anyway. But that may change in March.
The thirty-six-year-old how-do-you-pronounce-his-name? Chiwetel Ejiofor has never been nominated before, though ever since his breakout role in Stephen Frears' Dirty Pretty Things a dozen years ago, he has been building an impressive resume, and is one of those actors who always draws your attention on screen, be he first billed, ninth billed, or toiling in a not very good movie. Being at the center of the film that many peg as the frontrunner for Best Picture certainly doesn't hurt his cause. Now that he has broken the seal and made the Oscar cut once, win or lose you gotta figure he'll be back many more times in coming years.
And then there's Matthew McConaughey. After building a successful career for himself that, coupled with some off-screen escapades like nude bongo playing, also resulted in his name being a punchline, he has been enjoying a bit of a renaissance in the last few years, culminating in a well-earned nomination here. In addition to the Dallas Buyers Club, this year also saw him turn in great work in Jeff Nichols' Mud and a very McConaughey-ish cameo at the beginning of Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street. And now he's co-starring on HBO's excellent "True Detective". And if you go back the previous two years, he was very good in The Lincoln Lawyer, Bernie, Killer Joe, The Paperboy and Magic Mike. At the end of 2014 he'll star in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar. That's all a long way from formulaic romantic comedies and the kind of films he had been making his living at before this run. Will it result in winning Best Actor? If it does, get ready for one of the most interesting and amusing if barely intelligible acceptance speeches in Oscar history.
In previous eras of The Academy Awards, on occasion you tended to see some of the acting awards go to what seemed like acknowledgements for their entire career in the business as much, if not more so, than the quality of the actual nominated performance. There aren't really any examples of this in recent years that come screaming out, but the quality of the performance plus his long career could give the 77-year-old Dern a little edge at the ballot box. And he is damn good in Nebraska.
Christian Bale is the only one of the five nominees who has actually won before, a few years ago for Best Supporting Actor in David O. Russell's The Fighter. And that is his only other nomination. Bale often transforms himself, physically, for his roles, though usually it is taking his body to the extreme limits in the other direction, as not only the drug-addicted ex-boxer he won the Oscar for, but even more alarmingly as a POW in Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn and the troubled man wasting away in Brad Anderson's The Machinist. In American Hustle he strips away his vanity again to play the pudgy con man with the epic comb-over. Will he go two-for-two with The Academy?
The thirty-nine-year-old DiCaprio is the man with the most nominations in this field, with The Wolf of Wall Street being his fourth, having gotten previous nods for Supporting Actor in What's Eating Gilbert Grape? and Best Actor in The Aviator and Blood Diamond. But, despite being an incredibly good-looking, super famous movie star who grew up in the spotlight without becoming a burn-out or douchebag, who has linked up with Martin Scorsese in now five films as well as Tarantino and Nolan and Eastwood and Spielberg, being in both blockbusters and prestige pictures, and starring in two films that have won Best Picture...he hasn't won one. Not yet, anyway. But that may change in March.
The thirty-six-year-old how-do-you-pronounce-his-name? Chiwetel Ejiofor has never been nominated before, though ever since his breakout role in Stephen Frears' Dirty Pretty Things a dozen years ago, he has been building an impressive resume, and is one of those actors who always draws your attention on screen, be he first billed, ninth billed, or toiling in a not very good movie. Being at the center of the film that many peg as the frontrunner for Best Picture certainly doesn't hurt his cause. Now that he has broken the seal and made the Oscar cut once, win or lose you gotta figure he'll be back many more times in coming years.
And then there's Matthew McConaughey. After building a successful career for himself that, coupled with some off-screen escapades like nude bongo playing, also resulted in his name being a punchline, he has been enjoying a bit of a renaissance in the last few years, culminating in a well-earned nomination here. In addition to the Dallas Buyers Club, this year also saw him turn in great work in Jeff Nichols' Mud and a very McConaughey-ish cameo at the beginning of Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street. And now he's co-starring on HBO's excellent "True Detective". And if you go back the previous two years, he was very good in The Lincoln Lawyer, Bernie, Killer Joe, The Paperboy and Magic Mike. At the end of 2014 he'll star in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar. That's all a long way from formulaic romantic comedies and the kind of films he had been making his living at before this run. Will it result in winning Best Actor? If it does, get ready for one of the most interesting and amusing if barely intelligible acceptance speeches in Oscar history.
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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
Last edited by Holden Pike; 01-19-14 at 09:36 PM.
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How come I can't vote for Robert Redford or Oscar Isaac? Surely there must be a mistake somewhere.
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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
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Tight year for Best Actor, I would have loved to have seen Phoenix get a nod for Her, but I don't know who I would substitute him with, as all these men deserve a nomination.
I'm going with McConaughey because he did what Ejiofor didn't, which was commit physically to the role. It did not look like 12 years of slavery did that much damage to Ejiofor, but aids took its toll on McConaughey. Tack on the fact that he is driving his career back into the right direction (giving 3 great performances this year) I think they will hand him the Oscar this time 'round.
I'm glad Leo got a nod, one of his best performances, which was at an all-time constant high from the get-go. Hard to do.
I'm going with McConaughey because he did what Ejiofor didn't, which was commit physically to the role. It did not look like 12 years of slavery did that much damage to Ejiofor, but aids took its toll on McConaughey. Tack on the fact that he is driving his career back into the right direction (giving 3 great performances this year) I think they will hand him the Oscar this time 'round.
I'm glad Leo got a nod, one of his best performances, which was at an all-time constant high from the get-go. Hard to do.
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McConaughey did win the SAG Award for Best Actor, as well as the Golden Globe for Best Actor, Drama. So he has the momentum, clearly.
The SAG in this category is pretty damn accurate. In the nineteen previous years of the award, their winner has been the same as Oscar's sixteen times. And one of the three differences is was when Benicio Del Toro won for Traffic, but was nominated (and won) as only Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars. The other two differences came in the 2000s as well, with Russell Crowe winning for A Beautiful Mind while Denzel Washington got the Oscar for Training Day, and perhaps most oddly when Johnny Depp won for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl while Sean Penn won the Oscar for Mystic River. 16/19 is 84%, nothing to dismiss.
The Golden Globes are more problematic as a predictor, since they divide (sometimes seemingly arbitrarily) between Best Actor/Actress in Dramas and Comedies/Musicals. They really cover their ass, that way. For example, two years ago, the Globes awarded Best Actor Drama to George Clooney for The Descendants and Best Actor Comedy/Musical to Jean Dujardin for The Artist. Dujardin won the Oscar, so they were "right"...but they got two bites at the apple. If I get to guess twice, I'd get it correct more often than not, too.
This year McConaughey won Drama, and DiCaprio won Comedy, so if either of them wins, The Globes "predicted" it.
Going back to 1993, there have been six times that one of the two Globes winners for Best Actor didn't win the Oscar, too. Six out of twenty. Most of the differences came at the end of the 1990s and beginning of the 2000s, when despite getting two picks the Globes missed it five years in a row. 1998, the Globes had Jim Carrey (The Truman Show) and Michael Caine (Little Voice), neither of whom were even nominated at the Oscars, where Roberto Benigni won for Life is Beautiful (who the Globes didn't recognize). 1999, the Globes had Denzel Washington (The Hurricane) and Jim Carrey (Man on the Moon) while the Oscar went to Kevin Spacey in American Beauty. 2000, Globes picked Tom Hanks (Cast Away) and George Clooney (O Brother, Where Art Thou?) when Russell Crowe won the Oscar for Gladiator. In 2001, Globes had Russell Crowe (A Beautiful Mind) and Gene Hackman (The Royal Tenebaums) while the Academy went for Denzel Washington in Training Day. And 2002, the Globes awarded Jack Nicholson (About Schmidt) and Richard Gere (Chicago) but the Oscar went to Adrien Brody in The Pianist. The other miss by the Globes in the past twenty years was 2008, when they went with Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler) and Joaquin Phoenix (Walk the Line) but the Oscars had picked Sean Penn in Milk.
Since that wacky five-year span there where they really went off the reservation, the Golden Globes have either consciously or subconsciously gotten back more in lock step with the Academy. They'll probably be "right" again this year, unless Chiwetel Ejiofor or Bruce Dern can unstack the deck a bit. And I hope those are enough mixed metaphors for you.
The SAG in this category is pretty damn accurate. In the nineteen previous years of the award, their winner has been the same as Oscar's sixteen times. And one of the three differences is was when Benicio Del Toro won for Traffic, but was nominated (and won) as only Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars. The other two differences came in the 2000s as well, with Russell Crowe winning for A Beautiful Mind while Denzel Washington got the Oscar for Training Day, and perhaps most oddly when Johnny Depp won for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl while Sean Penn won the Oscar for Mystic River. 16/19 is 84%, nothing to dismiss.
The Golden Globes are more problematic as a predictor, since they divide (sometimes seemingly arbitrarily) between Best Actor/Actress in Dramas and Comedies/Musicals. They really cover their ass, that way. For example, two years ago, the Globes awarded Best Actor Drama to George Clooney for The Descendants and Best Actor Comedy/Musical to Jean Dujardin for The Artist. Dujardin won the Oscar, so they were "right"...but they got two bites at the apple. If I get to guess twice, I'd get it correct more often than not, too.
This year McConaughey won Drama, and DiCaprio won Comedy, so if either of them wins, The Globes "predicted" it.
Going back to 1993, there have been six times that one of the two Globes winners for Best Actor didn't win the Oscar, too. Six out of twenty. Most of the differences came at the end of the 1990s and beginning of the 2000s, when despite getting two picks the Globes missed it five years in a row. 1998, the Globes had Jim Carrey (The Truman Show) and Michael Caine (Little Voice), neither of whom were even nominated at the Oscars, where Roberto Benigni won for Life is Beautiful (who the Globes didn't recognize). 1999, the Globes had Denzel Washington (The Hurricane) and Jim Carrey (Man on the Moon) while the Oscar went to Kevin Spacey in American Beauty. 2000, Globes picked Tom Hanks (Cast Away) and George Clooney (O Brother, Where Art Thou?) when Russell Crowe won the Oscar for Gladiator. In 2001, Globes had Russell Crowe (A Beautiful Mind) and Gene Hackman (The Royal Tenebaums) while the Academy went for Denzel Washington in Training Day. And 2002, the Globes awarded Jack Nicholson (About Schmidt) and Richard Gere (Chicago) but the Oscar went to Adrien Brody in The Pianist. The other miss by the Globes in the past twenty years was 2008, when they went with Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler) and Joaquin Phoenix (Walk the Line) but the Oscars had picked Sean Penn in Milk.
Since that wacky five-year span there where they really went off the reservation, the Golden Globes have either consciously or subconsciously gotten back more in lock step with the Academy. They'll probably be "right" again this year, unless Chiwetel Ejiofor or Bruce Dern can unstack the deck a bit. And I hope those are enough mixed metaphors for you.
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The SAG in this category is pretty damn accurate.
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Joaquin Phoenix had a clearly better performance than Christian Bale, IMO. It's a shame he wasn't nominated, but this was a great year for lead actors.
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Tom Hanks and Robert Redford should have been nominated. Damn Academy and their bias against films about people facing life threatening situations at sea.
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Quite the year for Lead Actors. Hanks (in Captain) and Issac in Llweyn Davis I feel should have been nominated instead of Bale and Dern, not that either of them isn't deserving. (haven't seen Nebraska). Phoenix could have been nominated too.
As far as who did get nominated. I don't think Bale or Dern have a chance. I think it's between Ejofor, McConaughey and DiCaprio. Wouldn't be angry at all if any of the 3 won. Seen all 3 turns and I'd have to say all of them were spectacular. McConaughey however was my favorite one. It was surprisingly funny and heartwrenching all in one. He totally owned it. If you are going by all the awards he has won it is definitely his to lose. However I feel like Ejofor's role is more of an Academy favorite. he did a great job that's for sure. DiCaprio is the longest shot out of the 3 to me but he was equally as impressive. Only reason I really give him a chance is if the Academy feels like he is due for a Oscar (which he is) they tend to give them out for that reason from time to time. If it was a weaker lead actor year he would definitely win. After his snub last year I'm glad he got nominated this year, hopefully he wins an Oscar soon he certainly deserves one. Him and Pitt are past due for a statue.
As far as who did get nominated. I don't think Bale or Dern have a chance. I think it's between Ejofor, McConaughey and DiCaprio. Wouldn't be angry at all if any of the 3 won. Seen all 3 turns and I'd have to say all of them were spectacular. McConaughey however was my favorite one. It was surprisingly funny and heartwrenching all in one. He totally owned it. If you are going by all the awards he has won it is definitely his to lose. However I feel like Ejofor's role is more of an Academy favorite. he did a great job that's for sure. DiCaprio is the longest shot out of the 3 to me but he was equally as impressive. Only reason I really give him a chance is if the Academy feels like he is due for a Oscar (which he is) they tend to give them out for that reason from time to time. If it was a weaker lead actor year he would definitely win. After his snub last year I'm glad he got nominated this year, hopefully he wins an Oscar soon he certainly deserves one. Him and Pitt are past due for a statue.
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It's Leo for me all the way...though if Hugh Jackman for Prisoners was in there - I'd definitely vote for him.
I know he doesn't have much of a realistic shot, but I'm hoping against hope for a Bruce Dern upset.
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Strangely Bale is my favorite of the three performances I've seen, being Bale, Dern's, and McConnaughey. Sadly, I actually enjoy Hanks and Phoenix's performances more and they weren't nominated.
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I haven't seen Nebraska but I hope Bruce dern wins too, for some reason Nebraska is the nominated movie that I most want to see
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Yeah, there's no body mutilation in it
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Ten days until the Oscar winners are revealed. Still seems to be McConaughey's to lose.
The Academy has started doing this questionaire with the nominees, asking them four questions: 1) How did you hear about your nominations?, 2) What is your first movie memory?, 3) What artists inspire you?, and most abstractly 4) Why do you do what you do? Bruce Dern's is fun (still hoping he'll somehow win)...
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The Academy has started doing this questionaire with the nominees, asking them four questions: 1) How did you hear about your nominations?, 2) What is your first movie memory?, 3) What artists inspire you?, and most abstractly 4) Why do you do what you do? Bruce Dern's is fun (still hoping he'll somehow win)...
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I really hope Bruce Dern takes this one home, this is really the only category where I will be actively rooting for an upset, and Sally Hawkins I guess. But ya, #TeamBruce
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All good performances, mind you I'd kick Bale out for Redford or Isaac, but my vote definitely goes to Bruce Dern. Alexander Payne always gets great performances out of his actors, or his actors always give him great performances - however you want to look at it.
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