TV and radio are doing what they do before any ‘big’ event, whether it be England versus Ireland, the Budget or, as today, the Oscars. They predict what’s going to happen, spend hours broadcasting the show, and then spend the next day talking about it.
Of course, all they’ll talk about are the so-called major awards and then only if they’ve gone to British winners. Silly, twittering reporters in long frocks will be hanging about outside post-Oscar parties, hoping some vain, self-obsessed, insecure, silicone-implanted, face-lifted, botoxed, coked-up, arrogant star will deign to mouth a few clichés into the microphone.
Hitchcock was taken to task once for saying actors were cattle. Hitch denied it. ‘I merely said was that they should be treated like cattle.’ All this interest in their private lives, their fashions, and why they think their latest film is so important is like seeing inside an abattoir. It’s best avoided if you want to carry on enjoying sausages.
But that’s all by the way. I started this with the intention of listing ten rules for actors to follow if they want to win an Oscar. I’m sure someone’s done a thorough study of winners – and losers – over the last eighty years, but here are my superficial thoughts.
1. Play a loser
It’s always good to play a drunk, for example. Ray Milland did it in The Lost Weekend. Or a whore, like Jane Fonda in Klute. Clare Trevor did both in Key Largo. Frank Sinatra was nominated for playing a drug addict in The Man with the Golden Arm, but Nick Cage took the prize with Leaving Las Vegas. Let’s not forget the Duke in True Grit.
2. Play a ‘differently-abled’ person
Jon Voight won as a paraplegic in Coming Home and Daniel Day-Lewis wasn’t at his most healthy in My Left Foot, and Cliff Robertson was a right Charly. I don’t think Robert Newton was even nominated as Long John Silver – a travesty – but the Duke didn’t do badly with one eye.
It’s obviously better actually to be disabled, but I don’t think even the most dedicated of Method actors would go that far. But amputee Harold Russell won best supporting actor for the Best Years of Our Lives and deaf Marlee Matlin was best actress in Children of a Lesser God.
Peter Finch outdid them all. He was dead when he won for Network.
3. Be old
This works in two ways. You’re coming to the end of your career/life and Hollywood has neglected you in the past. It remembers with embarrassment how it overlooked the likes of Cary Grant, Kirk Douglas and Bob Mitchum. It was fortunate for the Duke that he had little competition in 1969, although Dustin Hoffman was following Rule 2 in Midnight Cowboy.
Like disability, old age can also help attract sentimental votes. And there’s the wonder not that’s done well, but that it’s done at all. Art Carney, for example, in Harry and Tonto. And George Burns in The Sunshine Boys.
4. Be young
Not as helpful as being old, but at least it means you’ve got time on your side. Jodie Foster missed out for Taxi Driver, but came back for The Accused, where she used variations of rules 1 and 2. Tatum O’Neal got a statuette for Paper Moon, but it wasn’t the beginning of a glittering career. Jack Wild was only nominated for Oliver, and look what happened to him. Best avoided.
It’s supposed to be an actor’s nightmare to work with children, but it didn’t too the Duke any harm in True Grit, nor Greg in To Kill Mockingbird, nor Jack Nicholson in As Good as it Gets. And that last film even had a dog as well. Nobody can upstage Jack. That reminds me –
5. Be popular with your peers
In other words be Jack Nicholson.
6. Be black (obsolete rule)
Once Sidney Poitier (Lilies of the Field) and Halle Berry (Monster’s Ball) had got their Oscars, not to mention Denzel (Glory), the pressure to award something to a person of colour was no longer an issue. After all, I think it’s fair to say that the Academy was merely making a point in 1963 with Poitier, when his performance bore no comparison to Richard Harris’ (in This Sporting Life) or Newman’s in Hud in the same year.
I wonder what the Duke made of it. Which oppressed group is next, I wonder. ‘Native Americans?’ Come to think of it, people with Indian blood have won. Ben Johnson in The Last Picture Show, James Garner in Murphy’s Romance, and Cher in Moonstruck.
7. Be in the right place at the right time
If you’re lucky you can get swept up in the enthusiasm for a film. Paltrow, for example, in Shakespeare in Love (what an aberration!). And there was Russell Crowe’s win in Gladiator, Donna Reed’s supporting award for From Here to Eternity. I’ve a feeling that’s why Hattie McDaniel won in 1939. GWTW was so popular that even a black woman could get an honour. Mind you, she was playing a Mammy (no threat there).
Handing a support actor award can be useful where a worthy film is otherwise unacknowledged. Lust for Life, perhaps, and Twelve o’clock High.
8. Do something showy
Chew the scenery, be larger than life, ham it up, play against type, show you can ACT.
Examples: Walter Huston, in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs, Hoffman in Rain Man, Pacino in Scent of a Woman, the Duke in True Grit, Bogart in The African Queen, Lancaster in Elmer Gantry, Marvin in Cat Ballou, Charlize Theron in Monster, Kingsley in Gandhi, Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, Borgnine in Marty, Roberts in Erin Brockovich and Broderick Crawford in All the King’s Men.
Of course, all they’ll talk about are the so-called major awards and then only if they’ve gone to British winners. Silly, twittering reporters in long frocks will be hanging about outside post-Oscar parties, hoping some vain, self-obsessed, insecure, silicone-implanted, face-lifted, botoxed, coked-up, arrogant star will deign to mouth a few clichés into the microphone.
Hitchcock was taken to task once for saying actors were cattle. Hitch denied it. ‘I merely said was that they should be treated like cattle.’ All this interest in their private lives, their fashions, and why they think their latest film is so important is like seeing inside an abattoir. It’s best avoided if you want to carry on enjoying sausages.
But that’s all by the way. I started this with the intention of listing ten rules for actors to follow if they want to win an Oscar. I’m sure someone’s done a thorough study of winners – and losers – over the last eighty years, but here are my superficial thoughts.
1. Play a loser
It’s always good to play a drunk, for example. Ray Milland did it in The Lost Weekend. Or a whore, like Jane Fonda in Klute. Clare Trevor did both in Key Largo. Frank Sinatra was nominated for playing a drug addict in The Man with the Golden Arm, but Nick Cage took the prize with Leaving Las Vegas. Let’s not forget the Duke in True Grit.
2. Play a ‘differently-abled’ person
Jon Voight won as a paraplegic in Coming Home and Daniel Day-Lewis wasn’t at his most healthy in My Left Foot, and Cliff Robertson was a right Charly. I don’t think Robert Newton was even nominated as Long John Silver – a travesty – but the Duke didn’t do badly with one eye.
It’s obviously better actually to be disabled, but I don’t think even the most dedicated of Method actors would go that far. But amputee Harold Russell won best supporting actor for the Best Years of Our Lives and deaf Marlee Matlin was best actress in Children of a Lesser God.
Peter Finch outdid them all. He was dead when he won for Network.
3. Be old
This works in two ways. You’re coming to the end of your career/life and Hollywood has neglected you in the past. It remembers with embarrassment how it overlooked the likes of Cary Grant, Kirk Douglas and Bob Mitchum. It was fortunate for the Duke that he had little competition in 1969, although Dustin Hoffman was following Rule 2 in Midnight Cowboy.
Like disability, old age can also help attract sentimental votes. And there’s the wonder not that’s done well, but that it’s done at all. Art Carney, for example, in Harry and Tonto. And George Burns in The Sunshine Boys.
4. Be young
Not as helpful as being old, but at least it means you’ve got time on your side. Jodie Foster missed out for Taxi Driver, but came back for The Accused, where she used variations of rules 1 and 2. Tatum O’Neal got a statuette for Paper Moon, but it wasn’t the beginning of a glittering career. Jack Wild was only nominated for Oliver, and look what happened to him. Best avoided.
It’s supposed to be an actor’s nightmare to work with children, but it didn’t too the Duke any harm in True Grit, nor Greg in To Kill Mockingbird, nor Jack Nicholson in As Good as it Gets. And that last film even had a dog as well. Nobody can upstage Jack. That reminds me –
5. Be popular with your peers
In other words be Jack Nicholson.
6. Be black (obsolete rule)
Once Sidney Poitier (Lilies of the Field) and Halle Berry (Monster’s Ball) had got their Oscars, not to mention Denzel (Glory), the pressure to award something to a person of colour was no longer an issue. After all, I think it’s fair to say that the Academy was merely making a point in 1963 with Poitier, when his performance bore no comparison to Richard Harris’ (in This Sporting Life) or Newman’s in Hud in the same year.
I wonder what the Duke made of it. Which oppressed group is next, I wonder. ‘Native Americans?’ Come to think of it, people with Indian blood have won. Ben Johnson in The Last Picture Show, James Garner in Murphy’s Romance, and Cher in Moonstruck.
7. Be in the right place at the right time
If you’re lucky you can get swept up in the enthusiasm for a film. Paltrow, for example, in Shakespeare in Love (what an aberration!). And there was Russell Crowe’s win in Gladiator, Donna Reed’s supporting award for From Here to Eternity. I’ve a feeling that’s why Hattie McDaniel won in 1939. GWTW was so popular that even a black woman could get an honour. Mind you, she was playing a Mammy (no threat there).
Handing a support actor award can be useful where a worthy film is otherwise unacknowledged. Lust for Life, perhaps, and Twelve o’clock High.
8. Do something showy
Chew the scenery, be larger than life, ham it up, play against type, show you can ACT.
Examples: Walter Huston, in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs, Hoffman in Rain Man, Pacino in Scent of a Woman, the Duke in True Grit, Bogart in The African Queen, Lancaster in Elmer Gantry, Marvin in Cat Ballou, Charlize Theron in Monster, Kingsley in Gandhi, Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, Borgnine in Marty, Roberts in Erin Brockovich and Broderick Crawford in All the King’s Men.
Anthony Quinn should have tried it the other way round. He might have won even more.
10. Give Hollywood a touch of class.
Not too often, but once in a while, Hollywood likes to allow itself a little prestige. Be there at the time. The film might soon be forgotten or disparaged, but you’ll have your Oscar, like Olivier for Hamlet, F Murray Abraham for Amadeus, Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire, Max Schell in Judgement at Nuremburg, Schofield in A Man for All Seasons, etc . . .etc. Oh, recently there was that bloke who won for Capote.
11. Take a tip from George C Scott (who followed rule 8): Who needs an Oscar, anyway?
10. Give Hollywood a touch of class.
Not too often, but once in a while, Hollywood likes to allow itself a little prestige. Be there at the time. The film might soon be forgotten or disparaged, but you’ll have your Oscar, like Olivier for Hamlet, F Murray Abraham for Amadeus, Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire, Max Schell in Judgement at Nuremburg, Schofield in A Man for All Seasons, etc . . .etc. Oh, recently there was that bloke who won for Capote.
11. Take a tip from George C Scott (who followed rule 8): Who needs an Oscar, anyway?
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