Oscar's Best Actor 2020

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Who will be named the next Best Actor?
7.69%
2 votes
Antonio Banderas, PAIN & GLORY
0%
0 votes
Leonardo DiCaprio, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD
15.38%
4 votes
Adam Driver, MARRIAGE STORY
7.69%
2 votes
Jonathan Pryce, THE TWO POPES
69.23%
18 votes
Joaquin Phoenix, JOKER
26 votes. You may not vote on this poll




This year’s nominees include two older first timers, a rising star, a recent winner, and an overdue heavy favorite.


Janathan Pryce has received prestigious nominations for some of his television work over his long career that began in the 1970s, but never an Oscar. He made his feature debut in the 1976 all-star Voyage of the Damned and got his first taste of international attention first as Mr. Dark in Something Wicked This Way Comes then starring in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985). He was a welcome character actor in the likes of Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), The Age of Innocence (1993), Ronin (1998) and arthouse fare such as Carrington and Juan Perón to Madonna’s Evita as well as a gigantic career on stage including two Tonys, one for originating the lead role in Miss Saigon. But if he is familiar to the masses it was likely as the Bond villain in Tomorrow Never Dies or as Keira Knightley’s governor father in The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise before ascending to The High Sparrow on HBO’s ”Game of Thrones”. Two awards cycles ago his co-star Glenn Close was making the rounds as The Wife but he was left out of the attention. This year saw him star in the long-delayed The Man Who Killed Don Quixote for old friend Terry Gilliam and play Pope Francis to Anthony Hopkins’ Benedict in The Two Popes. The latter has finally brought him to the Oscar party as a Best Actor nominee at the age of seventy-two.

Pryce has less than no chance of winning, but much like Richard E. Grant’s Supporting Actor nod last year it is nice to see an old British vet get this kind of spotlight.



Antonio Banderas had a couple of Golden Globe nominations earlier in his career, for Evita and The Mask of Zorro, as well as some made-for-TV projects ("And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself" and "Genius"), but he never made the Oscar cut. Thirty-seven years after first teaming with Pedro Almodóvar in Laberinto de Pasiones their eighth film together has yielded Banderas his first Oscar nom at the age of fifty-nine. Playing a thinly-veiled version of his friend and mentor in Pain & Glory already earned him the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor back in May. Odds are extremely remote he’d actually win the Oscar here but as a bookend for his career with Almodóvar it is a fitting honor.



Adam Driver’s rise to Oscar nominee came last year in the Supporting Actor category for Spike Lee’s BlackKklansman (Mahershala Ali won for Green Book) and a year later he makes the Best Actor cut for Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story. For my money he should have broken through four years ago when he did standout work in Jarmusch’s Paterson, Scorsese’s Silence, and Jeff Nichol’s Midnight Special but now that he has broken his Oscar cherry I expect he’ll pop up regularly as a nominee and one of these days he’ll actually win. That day won’t come this February as there is a heavy favorite he would have to upset and it seems very unlikely. He is wonderful in Marriage Story and will surely be back, especially since you would have to believe his Kylo Ren Star Wars money makes him financially independent enough to choose work that is loaded with potential rather than working for work’s sake. This year Driver also starred as Daniel Jones in The Report, had fun in Jarmusch's deadpan spoof The Dead Don't Die, saw Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote see distribution, and ended his reign in the most recent Star Wars trilogy. That he has already collaborated with some of the best filmmakers around means his winning is really only a matter of time. As firey and magnetic as he is in Marriage Story it won't be this year.



Leonardo DiCaprio broke his winless streak at the Oscars four years ago when he won Best Actor for The Revenant. His second collaboration with Tarantino yields his sixth nomination following What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Aviator, Blood Diamond, The Wolf of Wall Street, and The Revenant. Had he not finally won last time out this movie star may have won for his very strong work as an aging actor who never got his big break Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. As fantastic as he is, and this is as good as anything he has ever done, he won’t get his second Oscar quite this quickly. Not with this Joker to the right.



Joaquin Phoenix has been one of the most interesting and compelling actors around for most of this century. His three previous nominations were for Gladiator (Benicio Del Toro won for Traffic), Walk the Line (Philip Seymour Hoffman won for Capote), and The Master (Daniel Day-Lewis won for Lincoln) while work such as Her, You Were Never Really Here, The Immigrant, and Inherent Vice wasn’t even nominated. Heath Ledger’s posthumous win for playing the character in Nolan’s The Dark Knight notwithstanding, it would have seemed unlikely his bigtime awards success would come playing a comic book villain. But that was before everyone got wind of what Todd Phillips and Joaquin were being allowed to do with the property, unrestrained by almost all of the superhero genre constraints to make a statement on despair and madness. Whether or not one grooves to Joker it is impossible to fault the method and results Phoenix brings to fore. It is a tour de force witnessing Arthur Fleck’s humanity abused and strained to the absolute breaking point before transforming into the vibrant terror that becomes Batman’s nemesis. He has won most of the major prizes leading into The Oscars and that coupled with the unique potency of his performance plus the fact that he hasn’t won before makes him the prohibitive favorite to become the next Best Actor.
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Also, just realized Adam Driver being nominated for an Oscar means he's going to have to sit down during the ceremony while they play a clip of him performing. Reminder that he can't stand that and walked out of an NPR interview over it. Seems to be genuine embarrassment and self-consciousness rather than simple diva behavior, but I wonder what the plan is for the big night?
Adam sat there without incident last year when he was nominated for BlackKklansman. In the YouTube clip below the movie scenes that played during the Oscar broadcast have been excised for licensing issues, but you can tell from his reaction he was relatively cool with sitting there.




Welcome to the human race...
I just figured it was one of those things he has to be prepared for - it's one thing to know you're going to have to watch a clip of yourself as part of an awards ceremony and another to have the clip sprung on you during what you thought was going to be a simple interview.
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I noticed Driver for the first time in Silence. It's a slow burn of a movie. But a good one. Went under the radar that year. He was good in the movie. I was like, who is this dude, doesn't look anything special, doesn't have a chiseled physique as is the trend these days. But boy can he act! And that is all that matters!
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Is that from Star wars? Then it is more recent transformation. Not when he started.


Kumail Nanjiani is barely recognisable these days he has beefed up so much.



This was him then





The dude famously served as a Lance Corporal in the United States Marine Corps before attending Julliard and becoming an actor after his medical discharge. He physically transforms for each role appropriately.



I wouldn't fu*k with him.



After finishing Richard Jewell, I would have to say Paul Walter-Hauser should have got the nod ahead of DiCaprio. This wasn't his best performance. Whereas Hauser's was brilliant. Just coz he is not a household name I think!



Tbh, it's a strong and highly competitive club. I'm yet to see P&G, but the rest have ranged from really good to awesome. It'd be nice if Pryce won it, as he hasn't won one and this might be his last chance to win it (you never know).

However, DiCaprio's performance is currently my personal favorite of the bunch.



Did DeNiro say/do something wrong that the Academy snubbed him in this category?

+

What Miss Vicky said..
DeNiro was not snubbed, this was not one of his stronger performances...Pacino and Pesci deserved their nominations, but DeNiro didn't deserve one.



DeNiro was not snubbed, this was not one of his stronger performances...Pacino and Pesci deserved their nominations, but DeNiro didn't deserve one.
That's how I feel about Adam Driver's nomination, thought his performance in the final breakdown/fight scene was flawed and not as believable as Johansson in the scene.
Anyway, Phoenix has this in the bag, haven't been this sure about a win in a long time.



Did DeNiro say/do something wrong that the Academy snubbed him in this category?



The UK block is very strong, this is the 11th straight year we've had an English actor make the cut.



Also Pryce and Banderas have never been nominated so that likely factored into it.



That's how I feel about Adam Driver's nomination, thought his performance in the final breakdown/fight scene was flawed and not as believable as Johansson in the scene.
Anyway, Phoenix has this in the bag, haven't been this sure about a win in a long time.
I think Driver's nod is richly deserved myself, strongest performance of his career in my opinion.



'No one’s asking for handouts or preferential treatment, though that’s what we give ourselves each year.'
Yeah I'll be watching the Oscars this year as much to see him finally get his Oscar as to see what he's going to chastise the industry for this time.



DeNiro was not snubbed, this was not one of his stronger performances...Pacino and Pesci deserved their nominations, but DeNiro didn't deserve one.
That's how I feel about Adam Driver's nomination, thought his performance in the final breakdown/fight scene was flawed and not as believable as Johansson in the scene.
We'll have to agree to disagree on Driver, I loved his performance in MS, even if the film isn't quite something I'd give Best Picture to.

Out of the Best Actor nominees though, so far I think Pryce will win it (though I'm yet to watch P&G).



Out of the Best Actor nominees though, so far I think Pryce will win it (though I'm yet to watch P&G).
I think you're going to be very disappointed on Sunday.