Who’s up for a challenge?
Looking at the list of nominees for the Golden Globes back in December, I found myself focusing on the Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture category. Four of the five nominees were serious ack-tors, women who surely could have expected to win (Sorry, Beyonce! You understand, don’t you?). But I found myself disappointed. These women could play those roles in their sleep, I thought. The performances were strong, certainly: there was not a stinker in sight among Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, Renee Zellweger in Miss Potter, Annette Bening in Running with Scissors, and Toni Collette in Little Miss Sunshine. But when it comes to awards, how do we quantify a strong performance that isn’t an obviously transformative one?
It’s not that any of those actors phoned their performances in, or that they put less than the required amount of effort into their roles. I’m sure there was thought and emotional preparation that went into those performances, and according the HPFA, the resulting work was worthy of an award. But haven’t we seen Streep as villainous-but-vulnerable before? Does Zellweger have to work especially hard to be spirited (accent notwithstanding)? And does it matter? What should go into the equation for an award-winning performance–do the difficulty of the role and the talent of the actor be considered factors?
When a role is dramatically different from an actor’s usual persona–Charlize Theron in Monster, say–the extra challenge usually wins the actor brownie points, and maybe an awards-show victory. This is where the theory of “uglifying” for a role began, as beautiful women started taking physically unattractive roles and then watching their careers take off. If a role is clearly a stretch, a makes sense. It’s the less flashy, truly “supporting” roles that come into play here: What makes a performance good, if an actor isn’t required to use his or her full range?
What do you think, readers?
January 25th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
most of these award shows are actally fashion shows — the real films and the real good films are really not cited — as well as the really good actors —
susan sarandon was right — usually awards are given outo on the merit that this
person-suffered-a-painful-divorce-this-year-award
or
most-money-making-film-of-the-year-award
or
film-that-got-the-most-hype-award
it’s all illusion.