comment #1

Josh Massey says ...

Because Harvey wanted it that way?

comment #2

Sabina E says ...

Yeah, it was probably Harvey's doing.

The Reader doesn't even have a "supporting female lead," so I'm still baffled by Kate Winslet as "supporting actress" in that movie when clearly she was the lead.

comment #3

actionman says ...

The movie is the kid's story. Her character supports his character. I don't see what all the fuss is about really.

comment #4

JHR says ...

actionman is right...doesn't mean that some sort of gamesmanship isn't taking place, but having seen "The Reader" I have no problems with her role being considered supporting...

comment #5

Deathtongue_Groupie says ...

..because Winslet didn't think to put on a fake nose?

comment #6

Mark says ...

If Actionman is right, why did Hoffman, Hopkins, and Hanks (Philadephia) win for obvious supporting roles?

comment #7

CitizenKanedforChewingGum says ...

Because the Academy is never right?

comment #8

MindlessObamaton says ...

And don't forget Jennifer Connelly winning a Sup Oscar for ABM when she was the only female in movie and clearly the lead.

comment #9

TM says ...

Sounds like something Tom O'Neill would say.

Kidman's character was Virginia Woolf -- the whole movie revolved around her and her book "Mrs. Dalloway." Julianne Moore's character was reading the novel and Meryl Streep was a modern-day version of the character. So I can see the argument and buy it.

Initially I had reservations about Winslet as well but as Actionman says -- the story is really the man's and she plays a large role in it -- but her character is really supporting his arc.

The Academy has a history of doing this but arguments can be made one way or the other.

comment #10

JHR says ...

"And don't forget Jennifer Connelly winning a Sup Oscar for ABM when she was the only female in movie and clearly the lead."

How does being the "only female" in the movie make her "clearly the lead?" There don't have to be male and female leads in a film...many films have only one lead character, and I think actionman's definition is the operative one...

A film that confuses me in this regard, though, is "The Last King of Scotland"...it is the Scot doctor's story, and McAvoy is in damn near every scene while Whitaker has limited screen time in the "bigger than life" role, of course, but arguably the supporting role in that film...

comment #11

Josh Massey says ...

Why to people continually intimate a "supporting actress" must support another actress? A performer can also support a member of the opposite sex.

comment #12

erniesouchak says ...

Just because someone is the only female (like Jennifer Connelly in A Beautiful Mind) doesn't mean she's a lead. Doesn't screen time have something to do with it? Winslet is a supporting actress in The Reader, and Kidman, Streep and Moore were ALL supporting actresses in The Hours. And Heath Ledger is the lead actor in Dark Knight.

comment #13

MindlessObamaton says ...

Screw 'em.

comment #14

K. Bowen says ...

A bigger question ...... How is Dev Patel a supproting actor? Is it possible to be a supporting actor when you play the main character?

Last year it was the same problem for Cate Bhanchett. How does someone get a supporting nod for playing Bob Dylan in a Bob Dylan biopic?

comment #15

Josh Massey says ...

Subtracting the little flash forwards (or whatever you want to call them), Patel doesn't show up until over an hour in. I would still argue his performance is lead, but I wouldn't waste my breath arguing against it either.

The Blanchett one is a helluva lot more cut-and-dry. She was on screen for, what, 25 minutes?

comment #16

Edward Havens says ...

K. Bowen: Cate Blanchett played "Jude" for a small portion of the film. There was no one lead performance in the film, and technically it's not even the same character between the six of them.

As for the remaining performances: it's a very simple answer... the Academy refuses to make a clear stand over what makes a performance lead or supporting. In fact, in the very rules of the Academy's Acting Awards rules is this little nugget...

A performance by an actor or actress in any role shall be eligible for nomination either for the leading role or supporting role categories.

And that is how Harvey and FSL and everyone else gets away with this shit.

comment #17

Arran says ...

What JHR said about Last King is much the same as with Training Day. Hawke is clearly the lead character, yet it was Denzel who won for best actor. I guess in some cases a character might not "technically" be the lead, but they dominate the movie so much people think of them as the main character.

It's all very inconsistent and odd, but I don't care enough to get worked up about it. If it means Winslet finally gets an Oscar I don't really care.

comment #18

theultimatebiu says ...

This is nothing new. I remember all the hoopla over Jennifer Hudson's supporting actress nods getting alot of tongues waggling as the character is the lead of the movie.

comment #19

cinefan says ...

A good example of a supporting performance being nominated in a lead category would be Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs. He's only in the movie for a half an hour and yet he's nominated for best lead actor. I would argue that his performance is absolutely a supporting one since almost all of his scenes are with Foster and he is clearly "supporting" her lead performance.

comment #20

CitizenKanedforChewingGum says ...

"And Heath Ledger is the lead actor in Dark Knight."

Possibly, but his screen time is significantly less than Bale's, and possibly even less than Eckhart, Gylenhaal, Caine, Freeman, etc (I didn't time it or anything). In cases such as this and the one JHR is referring to, sometimes a downgrade of a character to "supporting" is acceptable if the screen time is minimal.

Then again, Tony Hopkins won lead actor for TSoL, and I can almost guarantee he had less screen time than Ledger did. The moral of the story is every case is unique, and this is not really the kind of thing you can predict with any consistency.

comment #21

CitizenKanedforChewingGum says ...

Well, I might just have to go through and time these things. Cinefan claims half an hour (which feels right to me) for Hopkins, but there are a few sites that claim he is onscreen for 16 minutes, and then one claims it's only 8? That certainly can't be right, though. It depends on how you time, I'm betting...some probably keep the timer going if he's in a scene even if it cuts away -- that would make a big difference in his longest scene with Jodie Foster in the jail cell.

The only count I can find online for Ledger in TDK has him at around 20 minutes.

These aren't verified, but obviously in both cases, we're talking about a pretty damn small percentage (12-25%) of the entire film's running times.

comment #22

PCP_Patriots says ...

Samuel L Jackson was supporting actor nominee for Pulp Fiction while Travolta was leading ... for the Oscars! This stuff seems to happen a lot!

comment #23

JHR says ...

It is interesting because the Academy uses a stopwatch when measuring how much of a score is original versus previously written material, so clearly they are not averse to setting a time standard for these kinds of things.

The real question is whether Winslet would have been submitted for the supporting category if that had been her only film last year...my gut tells me it still would be a supporting role submission, not a lead...I think actionman was correct in his analysis of this particular role...

Who decides? Is it the Academy, or do producers submit actors for a particular category? And if this is the case, does the Academy ever overrule and place the actor in the more appropriate category?

comment #24

Jonah says ...

"Samuel L Jackson was supporting actor nominee for Pulp Fiction while Travolta was leading ... for the Oscars! This stuff seems to happen a lot!"

This seems fair to me. Unless I'm forgetting something, all of Jackson's scenes were with Travolta. He didn't have any scenes separate from Travolta's character.
Travolta had a fairly long scene with Stoltz, pre date with Thurman. Then the date, then the OD, then the second big scene with Stoltz.

Travolta was the lead.

comment #25

CitizenKanedforChewingGum says ...

That's actually a pretty decent definition of a lead character, Jonah...I was never quite able to pin it down like that. Kudos.

comment #26

cinefan says ...

According to IMDB, Hopkins has the least amount of screen time in Silence for any actor who's won a Best Actor Oscar. He really should've won Supporting that year but his character so dominates the film that he wound up in the Lead Actor category. Looking at Hopkins' precedent, one can make a strong argument that Ledger should be in the Lead Actor category the way his character's presence and actions ominate and haunt the film even when he's off-screen.

comment #27

cinefan says ...

that should be "and actions dominate..."

comment #28

Josh Massey says ...

Hopkins won Best Actor because Orion campaigned HARD for it. They saw an opportunity to sweep the major awards (for, what, the second time after Cuckoo?) and they went for it.

comment #29

JHR says ...

BAFTA has Winslet competing against herself in the lead actress category...

comment #30

free games says ...

..because Winslet didn't think to put on a fake nose?

comment #31

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