The Oscar categories for ing Actress and ing Actor were introduced at the 9th Academy Awards in 1937 to recognize those who excelled in roles that were less-than-leading, but no less important to the story. It’s a category in which emerging actors, fantastic character performers and non-famous industry veterans have found their way to Oscar glory.
Except that in recent decades, there’s so much more to an Oscar-winning performance than what we see on screen. It’s often a deliberate campaign, using every publicity trick in the book: red carpet walks, ‘surprise’ Q&A appearances, press coverage about the sacrifices involved in playing the part, narratives about previous ‘awards snubs’.
And then there’s category fraud—a strategy where studios split two stars across two categories, in order to nudge both towards the Academy’s podium. Example: for their equally leading roles in Carol, Cate Blanchett won the leading actress nomination, while Rooney Mara was nominated for ing actress.
The problem, as Anne Thompson writes in her recent Thompson on Hollywood column assessing this year’s likely category-shifts, is “when lead actors (or actresses) decide they have a better chance in ing, they take a slot away from another deserving performer”.
As history moves on and the politics fade away, measuring screen time is perhaps one of the few objective, quantifiable and finite pieces of information the director es along to the audience and Oscar voters about an actor’s contribution to a film.
