The Best Actor race is all but over, as Jeff Bridges should finally be able to grab that elusive Oscar. Jeff Bridges road to this moment began close to 30 years ago with The Last Picture Show. At the age of 60 Bridges will become the eigth man to win Best Actor after his sixtieth birthday. After a decade dominated by peformances representing real people, Jeff Bridge will be the fifth winner of the decade portraying a fictional character. Looking at the history of the category historical figures havn't always been favorite to take the top prize at Oscar, with only eightteen performances portraying historical figures. Ten of those have occured since 1980 beginning with Robet DeNiro portraying Jake LaMotta. A look at some numbers I compiled regarding the Best Actor winners.
Winner From Best Picture Nominated Film: 59 times 73%
Winner From Best Picture Winner: 25 times 30%
Portrayed Real Person: 18 times 22 %
Actor Never Nominated Again: 21 times 26 %
Avg. Age: 42.817073
Under 40: 32 times 39%
Over 50: 17 times 21%
Over 60: 7 times 9%
Yougest Winner: Adrien Brody - The Pianist (29)
Oldest Winner: Henry Fonda - On Golden Pond (76)
A quick look at the numbers reflects a trend that the older the nominee the better chance at winning the Oscar. This wisdom has derived for Oscar rewarding career Oscars to actors who have yet to win, but more actors have won in their thirties than AARP eligible actors. The other statistic I wanted to track was whether an actor's film was nominated for Best Picture or if that movie won the Oscar's top prize. Being in a Best Picture is not necessarily tht important. The last time Best Actor matched with Picture was back in 2000 with Russell Crowe in Gladiator. More important is for an actor's film to be nominated for Best Picture, with this occuring close to 3/4 of the time. As the picture field has been expanded back to ten whether this will become even more important remains to be seen. However, it should be noted that when the field was expanded in the thirties and forties, only two of the winners came from movies that failed to garner a nomination.
A look at these year's nominees
Jeremy Renner - The Hurt Locker (39) Film nominated
George Clooney - Up in the Air (48) Film nominated
Colin Firth - A Single Man (49) Film not nominated
Jeff Bridges - Crazy Heart (60) Film not nominated
Morgan Freeman - Invictus (72) Film not nominated
Morgan Freeman holds the advantage for having portrayed a historical figure, yet he would also be only the second actor to have won after turning 70. George Clooney and Colin Firth are also in their forties the categories preferred age group, but Colin Firth is in a film outside of the nominee field. George Clooney's Up in the Air is nominated, but also won rather recently. Jeremy Renner has the added advantage of not only being in a nominated film, but also one of the Best Picture frontrunners, while also falling just below the mean age of winners. Jeff Bridges would only be the eigth winner to win after turning 60, but is also in a film not nominated for Best Picture. However, like Al Pacino and John Wayne before him, Bridge's win will be a reflection of awarding a veteran actor for a distinguished career.
Full workup below
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tZ58co6_Nuh3z7FJNc5A3vQ&output=html
Thursday, February 4, 2010
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I wish the the Oscars would just acknowledge someone based off of the particular performance, not just their lifetime. It gives movies that really don't have anything to boast but a good veteran unwarranted prestige.
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