Oscar's Best Supporting Actor 2020

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Your vote for Best Supporting Actor goes to...?
13.64%
3 votes
Tom Hanks, A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
4.55%
1 votes
Anthony Hopkins, THE TWO POPES
4.55%
1 votes
Al Pacino, THE IRISHMAN
22.73%
5 votes
Joe Pesci, THE IRISHMAN
54.55%
12 votes
Brad Pitt, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD
22 votes. You may not vote on this poll




I agree with everything you've said here...Pesci was so beautifully understated in this movie, unlike any performance he has ever given. I was shocked when Pitt won the Golden Globe, I really thought Pesci had it in the bag and despite Pitt winning the Globe, Pesci is still my choice for the Oscar. i have to wonder though if the fact that Pesci already has an Oscar and Pitt has never woh will factor into it.

Think this will definitely play into this.

As good as Pesci was, I have a sneaking suspicion that Pacino and Pesci might split the vote and, in addition to both having been previously recognized, that Brad Pitt could well walk away with the Oscar, as he did with the Golden Globes. That is not taking away from Pitt's performance, which is every bit as deserving, but Pesci was as good as he ever was.



Supporting actor category is this year!
Wouldn't mind if Pesci, Pacino or Pitt wins it. But I voted for Pesci in the poll, Pesci just delivered a slightly more refined performance than Pacino imo, and Cliff Booth shouldn't get it for what he did to Bruce Lee..



I agree with everything you've said here...Pesci was so beautifully understated in this movie, unlike any performance he has ever given. I was shocked when Pitt won the Golden Globe, I really thought Pesci had it in the bag and despite Pitt winning the Globe, Pesci is still my choice for the Oscar. i have to wonder though if the fact that Pesci already has an Oscar and Pitt has never woh will factor into it.
It would have been great if Joe ended up winning all the Supporting Actor awards this season after more than 20 years of retirement, but it's not going to happen at the Oscars. That's not to mention that Joe did not even attend any of the award shows. Brad Pitt sure enough has it in the bag. All the nominees in the Supporting Actor category are previous Oscar winners, except Pitt. This is his turn. His year. Look forward to another inspiring acceptance speech by Brad in which he will dedicate the award to that amazing group of fellow nominees.
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Pitt is also helped by his being a lead-sized performance hiding out in the supporting category.
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This category's five actors had a total of twenty-two Oscar nominations coming into this season and five wins. Only one of the five has never won before, and he's the favorite to finally get his this time.


Tom Hanks is seemingly an industry unto himself. He has been a steadliy working actor since the early 1980s, became a movie star by the end of that decade, and a double Oscar winner in the next. He is one of the most beloved, bankable, and charming people in Hollywood. Deservedly so. His portrayal of Fred Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is his sixth nomination. While six nominations is more than respectable it also seems a little light given his stature and likeability. His previous nominations were all as Best Actor in Big (Dustin Hoffman won for Rain Man), then the historic back-to-back wins for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, Saving Private Ryan (Roberto Benigni won for Life is Beautiful), and Cast Away (Russell Crowe won for Gladiator). No other nominations for Hanks in all those years, not for Captain Phillips or Bridge of Spies or Sully or The Post or Saving Mr. Banks not to mention going back to Catch Me If You Can, Apollio 13, and A League of Their Own. He could easily be in double digit nominations by now, but for whatever reason - perhaps most of all that he didn't "need" them - he seemed to be the performance that didn't quite make the cut.

He won't win this year for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, it is largely unnecessary coming on the heels of the incredibly moving documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor? (2018), but it's nice to see Hanks among the five nominees again.



Sir Anthony Hopkins had been working on stage and screen for over twenty years before Hannibal Lecter made him a household name and an Oscar winner as Best Actor for Silence of the Lambs. He wasn't even the main character, he has relatively limited screentime, but his performance was so seductive and memorable he triumphed with the Academy. He has had four Oscar nominations since his initial foray as Hannibal the Cannibal: Best Actor for The Remains of the Day (Hanks won his first for Philadelphia), Best Actor as Oliver Stone's Nixon (Nicolas Cage won for Leaving Las Vegas), Supporting Actor as John Quincy Adams in Spielberg's Amistad (Robin Williams won for Good Will Hunting) and now Supporting Actor again as Benedict in The Two Popes. Hopkins continues to work, but in recent years he doesn't seem interested in taking big dramatic swings anymore, most visible this century as Thor's Odin in The Marvel Cinematic Universe and on HBO's "Westworld". At 82 he has more than earned that right, but when Fernando Meirelles came along with The Two Popes he couldn't resist. For the man who has played Captain Bligh, Adolph Hitler, and Dick Nixon, why not add in a German-born Pope named Ratzinger?

Hopkins won't win, but he can still bring his charm and gravitas to the screen and his fellow actors adore him.



With this pair Martin Scorsese's films have now produced 23 acting nominations here at the Oscars with five wins: Ellen Burstyn for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Robert DeNiro for Raging Bull, Paul Newman for The Color of Money, Joe Pesci for GoodFellas, and Cate Blanchett for The Aviator.


Al Pacino was one of those actors who got a mountain of nominations in the beginning of his career but had to wait a while to actually win. The Irishman is his ninth nomination, but first in twenty-seven years. Pacino's first nod came for his big breakthrough in The Godfather as Best Supporting Actor (nominated with co-stars Jim Caan and Robert Duvall it was Joel Grey who won for Cabaret), then four Best Actor nominations in the 1970s for Serpico (Jack Lemmon won for Save the Tiger), The Godfather Part II (Art Carney won for Harry & Tonto), Dog Day Afternoon (Jack Nicholson's year for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), and ...And Justice for All (Dustin Hoffman won for Kramer vs. Kramer). Al took much of the '80s off but when he returned he got three more Oscar nominations as Supporting Actor for Dick Tracy (this is Pecsi's win for GoodFellas), then double nominated in the same year as Supporting Actor for Glengarry Glen Ross (Gene Hackman won for Unforgiven), and finally his win as Best Actor for Scent of a Woman. No more nominations in all the years since, not for Carlito's Way, Heat, Donnie Brasco, The Insider, Insomnia or anything else. To be fair he's made a lot of junk the past twenty-plus years or so too (somehow he was overlooked for Jack & Jill), but after multiple collaborations with Francis Ford Coppola and Brian DePalma it is his first time working with Martin Scorsese that brings him back to the Oscar fore. His spirited portrayal of Jimmy Hoffa won't win him his second Academy Award, but it's nice to see him working in a prestige project again.



This is Joe Pesci's third nomination, all for Scorsese movies. His first was as Joey La Motta in Raging Bull and a decade later he won playing the gleefully psychopathic Tommy in GoodFellas. My Cousin Vinny made him an unlikely movie star for a while, but Pesci chose to fade away into retirement in this century, appearing in only two other films since Lethal Weapon 4 back in 1998: in the all-star The Good Shepherd (2006) directed by Robert DeNiro and Taylor Hackford's Love Ranch (2010) with Helen Mirren. Otherwise he was seemingly content to play golf and not worry about the whole acting thing. But DeNiro and Scorsese convinced him to join them, Harvey Keitel, and Pacino in The Irishman as Russell Bufalino. I think it is his best work ever, restrained yet powerful, absolutely magnetic on the screen. He won't win his second Oscar but boy was it great that his cinematic pals coaxed him back to the set.




Brad Pitt is the sh!t. But while he was put on the pretty boy movie star track early on he wisely decided he would much rather play weird character parts. After Legends of the Fall and A River Runs Through It he could have easily settled for safe, matinee idol romantic leads and made a ton of money. Instead he hooked up with Terry Gilliam, David Fincher, Steven Soderbergh, Alejandro González Iñárritu, The Coen Brothers, and Quentin Tarantino. Brad has now racked up four Oscar nominations as an actor: Supporting Actor for 12 Monkeys (Kevin Spacey won for The Usual Suspects), Best Actor for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Sean Penn won for Milk), Best Actor for MoneyBall (Jean Dujardin won for The Artist), and now Supporting Actor for Once Upon a Time In Hollywood. That he has always been impossibly good looking but self-deprecating has made him endearing, including to the industry itself. That he is clearly the co-lead and not a supporting role in OUATIH helps his cause, too. There are no hard and fast rules to enforce what constitutes a lead vs. a supporting role, so often parts are strategically shopped. Rather than have Pitt and DiCaprio compete against each other for Best Actor we'll call Pitt's role supporting. OK, fine, whatever. Oh, and plus Pitt is excellent as the mellow stunt double Cliff Booth who is more than capable of kicking ass when needed, though mostly he chauffeurs Rick Dalton around town and drinks beer. But boy is he the guy you want watching your back. For his portrayal of this handsome, self-assured Hollywood hanger on the real life reluctant movie star is about to become an Oscar winner.



Voted for Hanks, his performance is my favorite of the bunch.



BTW, I think Pitt will win, although, while I like him as an actor, I don't think his performance in Once Upon a Time... is Oscar material.



I think I voted Pesci. But it's been so long can't remember!
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Supporting actor category is this year!
Wouldn't mind if Pesci, Pacino or Pitt wins it. But I voted for Pesci in the poll, Pesci just delivered a slightly more refined performance than Pacino imo, and Cliff Booth shouldn't get it for what he did to Bruce Lee..
I voted for Pesci too





While there were a couple of fun surprises at the end of the night the four acting prizes went as advertised, starting with Brad Pitt winning his first as an actor. It was one of only two of its ten nominated awards Once Upon a Time in Hollywood received (Best Production Design was the other).

It is the third performance from a Tarantino film to win an Oscar following Christoph Waltz's two wins in this same category for Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. The six other nominated Tarantino acting performances are Travolta, Sam Jackson, and Uma for Pulp Fiction, Robert Forster for Jackie Brown, Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Hateful Eight, and Leonardo DiCaprio in OUATIH.