2015 Best Supporting Actor nominees

Oscars 2015: who will win best supporting actor?

Best supporting actor nominees at the OscarsClockwise from left: Ethan Hawke, JK Simmons, Robert Duvall, Edward Norton and Mark Ruffalo. Photograph: Rex /Allstar

Just because people refer to an Oscar race as “competitive”, it doesn’t mean it’s an especially high-quality one. In some categories, multiple nominees of comparable mediocrity can fight for golden statuettes. In others, a surfeit of outstanding contenders are declared also-rans from the outset, simply because one nominee has unbeatable momentum. So it is in this year’s best supporting actor race, for which the word “race” is hardly fitting: four top-form actors have award-worthy work to offer, but one of them has had this whole thing licked for the better part of a year.

Note that I said four top-form actors. The exception, as agreed by pretty much everyone except those who voted to put him on the ballot – and even they can’t be entirely convinced – is Robert Duvall. A near-annual slot is reserved in this category for an esteemed veteran who has done a film the great service of showing up, usually to scowl in an ornery fashion before expiring wheezily on screen. In this regard, Duvall’s work in the title role of The Judge – a failed vehicle for Robert Downey Jr that has already slipped the minds of critics and audiences – is a textbook slot-filler; certainly, no other branch of the Academy thought the film merited their attention. But Duvall, an Oscar winner and seven-time nominee, is 84-years-old (for trivia hounds, that makes him the oldest man ever nominated for an acting Oscar), and working less frequently in roles even of this marginal calibre. Consider this a hat tip to a remarkable career, if not a remarkable performance.

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Perhaps Mark Ruffalo – who currently holds the unofficial title of Actor Most People Would Gladly Join for a Pint – will some day be the beneficiary of similarly cumulative respect. “Taken for granted” might be pushing it for an actor who has two Oscar nominations so far, but the hard-working everyman still gets less credit than he deserves for routinely pulling off complex characterisations with such disarming subtlety. He’s quietly marvellous as doomed Olympic wrestler Dave Schultz in Foxcatcher, often serving as the decent, empathetic go-between for the more technically imposing performances of Steve Carell (nominated for best actor) and Channing Tatum (somewhat unfairly left out). It’s the kind of low-key work that often goes unrecognised by awards bodies, and given that the Academy evidently admired Bennett Miller’s icy film more than they liked it – Foxcatcher has five nods but no best picture bid – the nomination seems like a win here.

Birdman got a fresh gust of wind beneath its wings over the weekend: after winning both a Producers’ Guild award and the Screen Actors Guild ensemble prize, its odds for best picture have shortened considerably. No amount of momentum for the film, however, is going to lift Edward Norton out of the bridesmaid position, even if he’s arguably its most exciting element. Wickedly parodying himself as an egotistical method actor who is at once galvanising and destroying the Broadway vanity project of Michael Keaton’s protagonist, Norton is evidently having a ball with his athletic nesting of a performance within a performance within a performance. Even if the film abruptly drops him in its second half, this is the kind of bravura turn that would be a frontrunner in most years – particularly with Norton on his third nomination and due for a win. Yet his award from the National Board of Review looks set to remain his biggest trophy of the season, as an even brasher performance that announced itself in Sundance last January cruises to victory.

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