Foreign Film Race Pt 5: "Hey, I know that face!"
Monday, October 17, 2016 at 11:01PM 
"Everything u ever wanted to know about the foreign film category"
Pt 1 All the trailers (A-I) | Pt 2 All the trailers (J-Y)
Pt 3 Debuts | Pt 4 Female Directors
Pt 5. Actors You Know & Possibly Love
Successful actors really rack up the frequent flyer miles. Some pick up a second or third or fourth language and actually use those languages in their careers. Others merely stick to films in their native tongue but are magnetic or lucky enough to become well known all over the world.
So after surveying the 85 movies that are hoping to be nominated for this year's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, here are 12 actors you may already know (or at least recognize) who star in one or more of the submissions this time around...
Gael García Bernal made his feature film debut in the Oscar nominated Amores Perros (2000) and Oscar just kept right on gazing at him. As did we. To date he has starred in three Best Foreign Language Film nominees (Amores Perros, The Crime of Father Amaro, and No) and three other Oscar nominated films (Y Tu Mama Tambien, The Motorcycle Diaries, and Babel). He could add two more Academy stamped titles to that very impressive list this year since he headlines both the Chilean submission (Neruda, reviewed) and the Mexican submission (Desierto, which just opened in US theaters).
Fionnula Flanagan has been working in Irish, British and US TV and film since the mid 1960s and has won an Emmy (for the 1970s miniseries Rich Man Poor Man) as well as a lifetime achievement prize at the Irish Film and Television Awards over the course of her long career. She won lots of new fans and a Saturn Award for her role as the spooky housekeeper in The Others (2001) and this year she co-stars in the interlocking stories of Little Secrets, the Brazilian Oscar submission.
Ten more famiiar faces after the jump...
Everyone in It's Only the End of the World. Xavier Dolan's first English language picture hits soon but he's already moved up to all-star casting mode with his divisive latest, It's Only the End of the World. The principal cast includes five French luminaries who also moonlight in English language pictures: Natalie Baye, Vincent Cassel, Marion Cotillard, Gaspard Ulliel, and Léa Seydoux
Song Kang-ho starred in last year's South Korea's submission The Throne and he repeats the trick this year with Age of Shadows. If you don't know his name you know his face as the frequent muse of Park Chan-Wook. Previous internationally known films include Snowpiercer, The Host, Sympathy for Mr Vengeance and the great vampire picture Thirst.
Rade Šerbedžija is a Croatian actor who was a star of Yugoslavian TV and cinema of the 70s and 80s. His career went global in the 1990s after the international hit and Macedonian Oscar nominee Before the Rain (1994). Like Gael García Bernal he's in two of the submissions for 2016. He co-stars and co-directed the Macedonian entry The Liberation of Skjope and acts in Iceland's Sparrows. Even if you don't know how to pronounce his name, you've seen him act. He's appeared in close to 200 movies and television series (!!!) from the UK, US, Germany, and various countries from the former Yugoslavia. You might have seen him recently in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (as Gregorovitch), Downton Abbey (as Prince Kurgain in Season 5), or in any number of English language movies.
Cecilia Roth. The Argentian star of Spain's Oscar-winning All About My Mother (1999) returns to the race as the lead of Uruguay's Bread Crumbs. She never became as famous internationally as some of Almodóvar's other chief muses (she's in 6 of his pictures, mostly the early ones) or even a major Goya presence (though she won twice) because she spent a lot of time doing spanish language television rather than films.
Alfredo Castro. Like Rade & Gael, he's in two submissions this year. He appears briefly in the Chilean entry Neruda but headlines the Venezuelan entry From Afar (reviewed and currently available to stream on Netflix) as a closeted gay man with a taste for young street hustlers. If you've ever seen a Pablo Larraín movie you've seen Castro as he's a favorite of the rising director. He's co-starred in one previous nominee in this category (No, 2012) though most of his films with Pablo Larraín have been submitted by Chile.
Isabelle Huppert. Does she really need a bio here? The 63 year old French icon (with 15 Cesar nods and 2 Cannes Best Actress wins to her name) first became internationally famous in the late 70s with Claude Chabrol's Violette and made her English language debut just two years later with Heaven's Gate. She's been an oft-inspired workhorse ever since with an inimitable enigmatic starpower and chilly sex appeal that has aged spectacularly well. She's getting justly deserved Oscar Best Actress buzz for her role as a controversial video game designer who becomes obsessed with her rapist in the provocative French Oscar submission Elle (reviewed) which opens in the US next month. She's previously co-starred in three nominees in the Best Foreign Language Film category (Coup de Torchon in 1981, Entre Nous in 1983, and Amour in 2012) with the last of them winning the gold.
Previously
Pt 1 All the trailers (Albania through Italy)
Pt 2 All the Trailers (Japan through Yemen)
Pt 3 Debut Filmmakers
Pt 4 Female Directors in the mix this year
Reader Comments (9)
Yeah, Huppert does not belong here. She's got her own fandom.
Gael is a really charismatic actor and his choices are often quite inspired. He has escaped the Hollywood cliché and I think he can have a very long career. Javier take notice.
I've said it before, Alfredo Castro is an amazing actor.
Great line-up! And this presentation with the slow GIF-slideshows is exquisite.
Peggy Sue -- but i'm sure not all baby cinephiles know her just yet in case any are reading. there's always opportunities for new fans.
Charlie - thanks
Sure! In that case I strongly recommend Chabrol's Une affaire de femmes.
I agree with Charlie-the slow gifs are amazing, and Netflix-queue affecting.
For me, Flanagan stands out here. Her performance as Eloise Hawking is a work of beauty. Can't wait for Little Secrets now.
A possibility for your list is Argentina's favorite actor, Ricardo Darin. He starred in Oscar winner "The Secret in Their Eyes" and in Oscar nominees "Son of the Bride" and "Wild Tales". Several of his other films were submitted by Argentina but did not make the cut. For instance, "Carancho", "The Aura", "XXY", "Kamchatka" and "Avellaneda's Moon". He's been nominated 11 times over a period of 15 years for the Silver Condor Awards of the Argentinean Film Critics Association. He won 5 awards.
Marcos -- oh i know him. But i didn't notice that he was in any of the films this year?
Nathaniel, you forgot Oscar Martinez. He was in "Wild Tales" (segment "The Deal") and now he is in the argentine submission, "The Distinguished Citizen".
Oops Nathaniel! I didn't realize we were supposed to talk about actors in THIS year's submissions. Darin is not in any of them. But, well, for the sake of trivia, the most impressive record among Argentine actors belongs to Héctor Alterio, who was in 4 of the first five nominations for Argentina (one of them the first winner). He was in:
The Truce, 1974
Camila, 1984
The Official Story,1985 (WINNER)
and
Son of the Bride, 2001
He also was in 3 Argentine submissions that were not nominated:
I, the Worst of All, 1990
Wild Horses, 1995
Ashes from Paradise, 1997