OVP: Best Supporting Actor (2004)
The Nominees Were...
Alan Alda, The Aviator
Thomas Haden Church, Sideways
Jamie Foxx, Collateral
Morgan Freeman, Million Dollar Baby
Clive Owen, Closer
My Thoughts: We move into the acting category today, and a weird reminder that the Best Supporting Actor race of 2004 hardly features a slew of unknowns, but it's a strange field. Four of these men were getting their first nominations in 2004 (only Morgan Freeman had been nominated before this), and while Jamie Foxx double-dipped in 2004 (winning the lead actor Oscar for Ray), the only person in this field who would (to date) be nominated for an Oscar again would be, well, Morgan Freeman. All of these performers are still living & working (Alda even appeared in a Best Picture nominee in 2019), so I'm not sure why we haven't seen more success here, but other than Freeman, this is only year we'll get to discuss these performers in the context of this series.
Let's begin, then, with Morgan Freeman. Freeman's career (and his work in Million Dollar Baby) is sometimes hard to track because his time as a star is so atypical. An actor who didn't come onto people's radar until he was in his fifties (with 1987's Cry Freedom), his signature work in Shawshank Redemption was nominated in 1994 but didn't gain its ardent fanbase until years later after near constant reruns on TNT (if you are too young to remember this, there was a time when you literally couldn't flip through your cable package on the weekend and not see Shawshank playing). As a result, Freeman getting a career Oscar for Baby feels unusual since he'd only been famous for twenty years, but his age probably necessitated it. He is not expanding his skill set here-his weathered gym assistant is totally in his wheelhouse, and this isn't stretching what we expect from Freeman. That isn't a knock, though-Freeman is very good at knowing scripts that will work with him, and under the eye of longtime friend-and-collaborator Clint Eastwood, he brings a sturdiness to this role that other actors might have lacked. Still, this isn't his best work & it's not particularly challenging.
Jamie Foxx is giving the best performance of his career in Collateral. We'll get into the Ray discussion next week, but I am ripping the bandaid off now-he is better in Collateral. Playing a man who is stuck above-his-head, but learns as the movie continues that he is more-than-capable of taking on Tom Cruise's Vincent, he brings an everyman appeal to this role that other actors might have confused with bravado (in fact, it's hard to imagine Foxx himself would've played this in the same way just a few years later, his latter work too focused on Foxx's offscreen persona). That being said, Foxx is 100% a lead here, one of the more egregious cases of category fraud of the 2000's, and for that I must dock a point (we do that with any supporting performance I deem lead to even the playing field). But know that I was a fan, and really wish this was his Oscar nomination rather than Ray.
You could maybe claim that Clive Owen's role in Closer is also lead, as Closer is the kind of film where you could sincerely argue that all of the characters are leads, but when there's a grey area I tend to just base on the performance (rather than taking a star away). What isn't in debate is his how good Owen is here. He plays this character's cruel, predatory charm with such an ease that this would become the performance that would define much of his later career. It helps that he's got a great overall cast to play off (no one is slouching in this bunch), but he is the one actor who finds the most malice in Patrick Marber's play.
Thomas Haden Church still stands out to me as one of the oddest actors to score a nomination for the Oscars in the past twenty years. An actor who struggled in forgettable sitcoms (his most noted work being his decade on Wings), Church shows that great actors are oftentimes just in search of a great script. His Jack is a tough role-he is meant to not only be likable, but also believable as Miles' longtime friend. He plays him so well, infusing him with the heat of a man who was once able to win the world based on his implied promise (and is watching as that slips away from him with age), and represents a form of jovial toxic masculinity that is commonplace in real life, but very hard to put into a movie without it totally upending the character. That he pulls this off is one of Sideways more impressive tricks.
This leaves us with Alan Alda. Alda, like Church, has most of his fame in television, but unlike Church, that fame was incredibly successful (particularly MASH), and accompanied by frequent film acting including working with Woody Allen & David O. Russell. It's hard to begrudge the affable Alda a career nomination, but if we take this performance on its merits, it's a throwaway part that's basically just one great soliloquy in an otherwise inconsequential moment in the film. Cameos (which is basically what this is given the run time) can still be great, but this is one-note & makes virtually no impression beyond "hey, look, it's Alan Alda!" It's fun that Alda got a nomination, but the OVP focuses on just the work-at-hand and not a performer's full career, and in that context...this is a bit silly.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes went with Clive Owen, with all of this lineup save for Alan Alda getting nominated (instead, the HFPA picked David Carradine for Kill Bill Volume 2). The BAFTA Awards also went with Owen (home field advantage), and here skipped both Freeman & Church (if I recall correctly Million Dollar Baby wasn't eligible for the BAFTA's due to release date timing) in favor of Phil Davis (Vera Drake) and Rodrigo de la Serna (The Motorcycle Diaries). The SAG Awards also skipped Alda and (perhaps kneecapping his Oscar chances) Owen, giving their trophy to Freeman and picking Freddie Highmore (Finding Neverland) and James Garner (The Notebook). We're still recent enough that I lived through these Oscar seasons (when we hit the early 1990's, my sixth place guesses will get a little bit more stretched or I might only mention them selectively), so I know that Peter Sarsgaard (Kinsey) was actually a much bigger threat than any of the names I listed just now, give or take Highmore, and one of those two was the sixth place finisher.
Performances I Would Have Nominated: I know some might scoff, but just because a film is genre doesn't mean that it can't have great acting, and I've long felt that David Thewlis' anguished Professor Lupin in Prisoner of Azkaban is one of the series' more underrated performances. I'd also find room for David Carradine in Kill Bill, another actor proving that he was far more than the parts that were given to him during his heyday.
Oscar’s Choice: This was a pretty easy win for Freeman, even if Owen dominated the early precursor awards, as Million Dollar Baby's heat came late in the race.
My Choice: I'm going to give it to Owen-it's the best performance overall, and a superb star turn from an actor who never really got his due in later work. I'll follow him with Church, Foxx, Freeman, & Alda, a lineup I wouldn't have agreed with during 2004 (which goes to show how your tastes change as you age).
Those are my thoughts-what are yours? Are you with the Academy in deciding it was Morgan Freeman's time, or do you want to come over to Team Clive Owen? Who is an actor like Thomas Haden Church you think should go from sitcom sidekick to Oscar nominee? And Sarsgaard or Highmore-who was your bet for sixth place? Share your thoughts below in the comments!
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