When leading actors win supporting Oscars
March 23, 2002

No firm rules: Jennifer Connelly the latest to be put in the 'wrong' category

Richard Roeper

Who's she supporting, the little girl who plays Russell Crowe's roommate's niece?

If you're looking for a sure thing in your Oscar pool, check off Jennifer Connelly for her role as the loyal and long-suffering wife of John Forbes Nash Jr. in A Beautiful Mind.

For one thing, Connelly is excellent in a breakout part -- but then again, so is Marisa Tomei, who gives a classic supporting performance in Todd Field's In the Bedroom.

What makes Connelly the clear-cut favourite over Tomei, Helen Mirren and Maggie Smith (both for Gosford Park) and Kate Winslet (as the young Iris Murdoch in Iris) isn't the quality of her role, but the quantity. It's obviously a lead part.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has a precise and complicated set of rules for voting that rivals the Byzantine regulations of the International Skating Committee, but oddly enough, there are no specific guidelines in place to determine what is a lead and what is a supporting role.

In determining nominees, each branch selects its own candidates. The approximately 1,300 members of the actors' branch of the Academy determine the nominees, just as editors nominate editors, directors nominate directors, etc. After the nominations are determined, the entire membership votes in the major categories.

If you thought Gene Hackman was a lead in The Royal Tenenbaums, you could write his name in the lead actor category. But if you saw the same movie and came away with the impression that Hackman was part of an ensemble and had about the same amount of screen time and impact as Ben Stiller and Luke Wilson, you could have tabbed him as a supporting actor candidate.

Touted as a supporting actress candidate in trade ads, Connelly was one of the top five vote-getters in that category, though she probably received a number of mentions as a lead actress as well.

After Barry Fitzgerald was nominated in both categories in 1944 for Going My Way, the Academy determined that if an actor finished in the top five in both categories, which is theoretically possible, the actor would get the nomination in the category in which he or she got the most votes.

Connelly probably wouldn't have had a chance against Nicole Kidman, Sissy Spacek, Halle Berry et al. in the lead category, but she's the front-runner for supporting actress.

This is not the first time an actor has been slotted in the "wrong" category. With fewer than 20 minutes of screen time in The Silence of the Lambs, Anthony Hopkins created one of the most chilling and memorable screen villains ever, but it was not a lead role. Still, Hopkins was nominated, and won, for best actor.

Marlon Brando won best actor for The Godfather, while Al Pacino was nominated for best supporting actor for the same film, even though Pacino had considerably more screen time than Brando.

Then there are the occasions when even a supporting nod seems to be a stretch. Judi Dench won best supporting actress for Shakespeare in Love, even though she was onscreen for a whopping eight minutes, and Beatrice Straight was a supporting actress winner for Network -- despite having a grand total of 18 lines.

Source: The Chicago Sun-Times