by Nathaniel R
Will Will Smith hear his name called on March 27th?
You know the drill by now. As we're working on trivia and "how'd they get nominated?" theorizing, we love to imagine an avatar for each category melding all the nominees together. In the case of this year's Best Actor race that's a 51 year old bi-racial American movie star, who is married with multiple kids and who spends a lot of time in action franchises. Wait a minute this sounds suspiciously like The Rock! Oh, wait. Never mind. This fictional amalgam of our Leading Men is also an Oscar favourite with four nominations under his belt, usually for playing real life people. In all seriousness though...
This race is all Oscar players -- no newbies allowed. This is the first time since 1980 when all five of the Best Actor nominees are returning nominees. It's very uncommon to have a lead acting field with no first time nominees!
Benedict onstage in A Midsummer Night's Dream (2001) and Denzel onscreen in Much Ado About Nothing (1993)
Our favourite trivia discovery was that Denzel Washington and Benedict Cumberbatch have each done five Shakespeares in their career but there's no overlap in the plays. (It helps that Shakespeare was prolific but both of these acclaimed actors clearly enjoy performing his works)
With the completion of the Best Actor category, all of the Big Eight categories pages are fully polished, polled, and trivia-served so check them out and vote on the daily polls. Do you agree with our takes on how each of the acting and directing nominees landed their nominations?
- PICTURE
- DIRECTOR
- ACTRESS
- ACTOR - new
- SUPPORTING ACTRESS
- SUPPORTING ACTOR
- ORIGINAL & ADAPTED SCREENPLAY