I think the acting branch of The Academy did a pretty good job with this category, all five were very good performances. But let's start with Melissa McCarthy.
Bridesmaids was a big hit, and Melissa was the funniest element of it, stealing every scene she's in. I love that she was nominated, I think the Academy should highlight the funniest work of the year just as much as they highlight the most dramatic. But does she have a chance at winning? She does. She's definitely not the favorite, but I would not be at all surprised to hear her name called early on Oscar night. It's not unprecedented for comedies to win in the two supporting acting categories. Dianne Wiest and Mira Sorvino won for
Bullets Over Broadway and
Mighty Aphrodite, though to be fair those are Woody Allen's brand of comedy. Mercedes Reuhl in Gilliam's
The Fisher King, and of course there's Marisa Tomei in
My Cousin Vinny, and on the male side Kevin Kline in
A Fish Called Wanda. So it's not that they've never handed out hardware for silliness.
But beyond all that, Melissa McCarthy is just very well liked by her peers and the industry. She extremely personable, humble, and naturally funny, and maybe best of all, she gave one of the best acceptance speeches of the past couple years when she won the Emmy as Best Actress in a Comedy for
"Mike & Molly". Does being good at accepting awards really count toward Oscar voting? Probably more than we'd like to admit. The audience does have to sit there for four hours, they may like to see a little unscheduled and off-the-cuff entertainment now and again, you know?
Glenn Close is brilliant as
Albert Nobbs, but really just as strong is Janet McTeer, and because Albert is a very frightened and repressed character, McTeer's Hubert Page, who is so much happier and secure in his life, really steals the scenes she's in, and you completely understand how amazed Nobbs is with him/her. This is Janet's second nomination, having been in the Best Actress class of 1999 for
Tumbleweeds when Hilary Swank won her first Oscar in
Boys Don't Cry. Swank played a girl disguising herself as a boy in that one, which is what both McTeer and Close do in
Nobbs. Will that device bring more Oscars? I think Close has a much more realistic chance than McTeer, but I'm very happy she got the nomination, as hers was definitely one of the best performances I saw last year.
Bérénice Bejo as rising star Peppy Miller in
The Artist is wonderful. She doesn't get to show quite as much range of extremes as Dujardin, but she's very good. She's also the lead actress, let's be clear, but there are no rules in regards to screen time or billing or importance to the plot when it comes to making the distinction between lead vs. supporting performance at the Oscars. The powers that be (likely Harvey Weinstein) probably figured the until-now virtually unknown in America (although she was in the anachronistic Heath Ledger musical comedy
A Knight's Tale) Bérénice had a better chance at making it into the top five in this category rather than Best Actress. And they're probably correct. Will she win? Unlikely. Jean Dujardin has a true shot at Best Actor, but Bejo is a longshot here.
The Artist is likely going to get some of the biggest awards of the night, but she won't be swept up with them.
Jessica Chastain had a frickin' remarkable year. To call it breakout would be an understatement, and it has all culminated with an Oscar nomination. She's nominated for
The Help, but Chastain also played the mother in Malick's
The Tree of Life, another Best Picture nominee. But wait, there's more. She's also excellent as the wife of Michael Shannon in
Take Shelter (for me her best performance of the year), and she was also the younger version of Helen Mirren's character in the Nazi-hunting thriller
The Debt, and she plays Ralph Fiennes' wife in his modernized Shakespeare piece
Coriolanus, and she was a detective tracking a serial killer in the indie
Texas Killing Fields. Yeah, that was all 2011 for Ms. Chastain.
The Help was certainly the one that was seen by the most people, but she may be hampered by the fact that one of her co-stars is also a fellow nominee...
If Viola Davis is the soul and dignity at the heart of
The Help, Octavia Spencer gets mush of the credit for its humor and attitude. And obviously nobody is ever gonna forget her baking skills, nor will they ever likely eat a slice of pie in her presence. The conventional wisdom is that two actors from the same film in the same category will cancel each other out. This kind of doubling up happens more often than you may realize. Just in this Supporting Actress category alone, just going back to 2000, this is the
eighth time two women from the same project are on the ballot. That's a lot. In two of those previous seven, one of the duo wound up winning anyway, Catherine Zeta-Jones over her
Chicago co-star Queen Latifa and just last year when Melissa Leo K.O.d Amy Adams, her counterpart in
The Fighter. But with the other five pairs, somebody else from another film won: Kate Hudson & Frances McDormand in
Almost Famous (Marcia Gay Harden in Pollock), Helen Mirren & Maggie Smith in
Gosford Park (Jennifer Connelly in
A Beautiful Mind), Adriana Barraza & Rinko Kikuchi in
Babel (Jennifer Hudson in
Dreamgirls), Vera Farmiga & Anna Kendrick in
Up in the Air (Mo'Nique in
Precious), and Viola Davis & Amy Adams in
Doubt (Penélope Cruz in
Vicki Christina Barcelona).
So will Octavia Spencer be triumphant here? She has an excellent chance.
The Help only has four nominations, Best Picture, Best Actress, and these two Supporting Actresses. It is
not going to win Best Picture, and Viola Davis is up against some beloved veterans in the other category, so if
The Help is going to get anything, its most realistic odds are here. As AMAZING a year as Chastain had, I would think Octavia has the edge between them. But I think McTeer actually gave the best performance, Bérénice is beyond charming, and frankly I'd love to see McCarthy up there. Pick 'em.
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