Best Supporting Actor, 2001
(Click on the linked film titles for reviews of the corresponding films.)
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Nominee Jim Broadbent Iris 5:2 |
Moulin Rouge fans loved him. Then, having made viewers sigh at his sad-sack Pop in Bridget Jones's Diary, Broadbent went full throttle and made them bawl as John Bayley, the uxoriously devoted but increasingly frustrated husband of Iris Murdoch. Like Marcia Gay Harden in Pollock, or heck, Jennifer Connelly in A Beautiful Mind, Broadbent may prove that having the less "showy" of two parts in a biopic may secretly be the best means of getting noticed. |
Iris won't reach the same wide audience that has certainly seen The Fellowship of the Ring, and Ian McKellen is a more established name who gives voters more impetus to reward him. Sure Broadbent won the Golden Globe, but McKellen wasn't competing. |
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Ethan Hawke Training Day 50:1 |
Ethan, I like you, and therefore I'm not going to lie to you...
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...ain't no chance. Unpopular movie, a dubious understanding of "supporting," and an off-the-charts Inexperience Factor compared to the other four nominees. This ingenue stuff works in Best Supporting Actress (Tomei, Paquin, Sorvino), but not here.
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Ben Kingsley Sexy Beast 6:1 |
Supporters have been trumpeting this performance all year. Like Memento's script, Kingsley's pure-id villain has been touted since last year's Oscar derby as a certain contender in this year's, and his most vocal proponents claim that he's reinvented an archetype. Nice switcheroo from the days of playing Gandhi.
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Did I mention Gandhi? Kingsley already has an Oscar, which Broadbent and McKellen don't, nor is he likely to offer half so cuddly or puckish an acceptance speech. Don Logan, so say his detractors (and I agree with them), is a sort of high-concept part that operates at close to the same level throughout his screen time.
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Ian McKellen The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring 3:1 |
Would anyone else have made this such a memorable role? Would even Alec "Obi-Wan" Guinness, Ralph "Greystoke" Richardson, Laurence "Clash of the Titans" Olivier—all those names with which McKellen's gets regularly bandied about—have had any such luck sliding into such a grand, robustly emotional spectacle and still managed to find both the humor and the power in Gandalf? And hey, isn't it embarrassing that this guy has no statues? John Gielgud won, after all those years doing classics, for playing Dudley Moore's butler in Arthur.
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And, as everyone has been noticing lately, Alec Guinness lost in Star Wars. Guinness, let's remember, already had an Oscar, was a less ingratiating character, campaigned much less hard to win, and was up against Jason Robards of all people. So those debits may not hurt McKellen as much as the fact that McKellen is vying for votes among the same youngish crowd that Training Day and Sexy Beast are likely to impress. Broadbent has the whole old-fogey contingent in his corner.
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Jon Voight Ali 25:1 |
See Ethan Hawke. |
It's a short performance in a strange makeup job with very little effect on the plot of a movie the bulk of the voters disregarded anyway. Voight's nomination was mostly fueled by pre-release hype; the fact that no one replaced him on this ballot largely implies there was no one to take his place.
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