Five first-time nominees, one of which is about to be the next Academy Award winning Best Actress.
Without even getting into the off-screen controversies surrounding
Emilia Pérez's
Karla Sofía Gascón and
I'm Still Here's
Fernanda Torres, consider this: in the entire ninety-six previous Oscars, a primarily foreign language performance has won Best Actress only twice: Sophia Loren in
Two Women (1960) and Marion Cotillard in
La Vie En Rose (2007), speaking Italian and French, respectively.
The Actors Branch has gotten better in the past few decades, nominating some non-English performances. For Best Actress we have had Fernanda Montenegro in
Central Station (1998), Catalina Sandino Moreno in
Maria Full of Grace (2004), Emmanuelle Riva in
Amour (2012), Marion Cotillard again for
Two Days, One Night (2014), Isabelle Huppert for
Elle (2016), Yalitza Aparicio for
Roma (2018), and Penélope Cruz twice for the Almodóvars
Volver (2006) and
Parallel Mothers (2021). Some excellent performances, but no Oscars to be found.
Given that history, controversies or no, are either of their performances so strong or the movies they are in so beloved that either one was going to win this year, speaking Spanish and Portugese, respectively?
Moving on.
Cynthia Erivo was a known brilliant singer from Broadway before she ever started being in movies, though her singing scene in
Bad Times at the El Royale (2018) would have signaled that loud and crystal clear (go find it on YouTube right now, if you've never had the pleasure). That she can sing magnificently as Elphaba in
Wicked is no surprise. Doesn't mean she doesn't get points for it from Oscar voters, but it is not a talent being uncovered for the first time, like Zoe Saldaña's dancing. Will it get her an Oscar her first time nominated? Probably not. But maybe
Wicked Part Two next year?
You definitely noticed
Mikey Madison before, even if you didn't catch her name. She was would-be Manson murderer Sadie in Tarantino's
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2019). The dark-haired little Hippie who got hit in the face with a can of dog food by Pitt's Cliff Booth before DiCaprio's Rick Dalton finishes her off with a flame thrower, preventing the Tate-LaBianca carnage from happening. As indelible as that bit of cinematic revisionist history may be, she most definitely has a new iconic screen role, and that is as Ani in Sean Baker's
Anora. This time everybody knows her name. More than the simple hooker with a heart of gold, Madison and Baker give us a fully developed, desperate yet hopeful character who gets involved with the son of a Russian oligarch. No
Pretty Woman fantasy endings here. Mikey won the BAFTA and Independent Spirit Awards as Best Actress. Will it be enough momentum to get her the Oscar?
Demi Moore has been a known commodity since the 1980s and became a bonafide movie star in the 1990s. She started on Soap Operas as a teenager before graduating to big screen forgettable comedies like
Blame it on Rio (1984) with Michael Caine and Jerry Schatzberg's
No Small Affair (1984). Even though she was the melodramatic center of THE Brat Pack movie
St. Elmo's Fire (1985), she mostly dodged the label, unlike most of her co-stars. By the time she starred in the surprise blockbuster
Ghost (1990), she was a household name. Married to Bruce Willis and bringing home multi-million dollar paychecks when really only she and Julia Roberts could command that salary. While at least one of the subsequent projects turned out to be a classic (1992's
A Few Good Men) and a couple were box office successes at the time (
Indecent Proposal and
Disclosure), too many were duds (
Striptease, The Juror, G.I. Jane) and one is perhaps the single worst major literary adaptation in Hollywood history (1995's butchering of
The Scarlet Letter). By the end of the decade that started so hot she was more famous for being famous, with more people seeing Tweets of her in bathing suits and with her new young husband in the tabloids than any movie she bothered making.
It's difficult to look closely at her filmography and lament that the Oscars unfairly passed over worthy performances. But Demi is definitely a survivor, in and out of the business. At the age of sixty-two she wound up in the perfect vehicle to reignite her career, a satirical piece that looks at women aging in Hollywood, and this creepy, sharp-edged
Substance has gotten her that elusive Oscar nomination. She's won the Golden Globe, the Critics Choice, and the SAG Award.
Looks like Moore and Madison are on a collision course. Which one will hear their name called?
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