How Did the Lead Actor Race Get So Crowded So Fast? |
The Venice and Telluride Film Festivals have wrapped up, and Toronto will reveal its winners this weekend—which means we finally have a much clearer picture of the awards season landscape.
I’m Rebecca Ford, back from the Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals with lots of titles under my belt. One thing I’ve noticed is how crowded the lead actor race is already shaping up to be this year.
In Venice, Bugonia debuted to raves, especially for Jesse Plemons’s lead performance as an intense conspiracy theorist who is convinced aliens live among us. George Clooney earned a lot of critical acclaim for his movie star role in Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly. At Telluride, while Jeremy Allen White earned a standing ovation for playing Bruce Springsteen in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, and Colin Farrell was the talk of the town for his bold role as a gambling addict in Edward Berger’s Ballad of a Small Player. In Toronto, Channing Tatum caught everyone’s attention for his charming performance in Roofman as a man who escapes prison and hides out in a toy store. And Matthew McConaughey turned heads for playing a bus driver racing to rescue a busload of kids from a fire in Paul Greengrass’s The Lost Bus.
By my count, that’s at least seven lead actor performances worth considering from just those film festivals alone, not to mention a few that debuted at festivals earlier this year—like Joel Edgerton for Train Dreams, and Wagner Moura in The Secret Agent. I also sat down with Ethan Hawke in Toronto after seeing Blue Moon at Telluride, and I thought his transformational performance as Lorenz Hart was some of the most demanding work he’s done.
Let’s not forget that Michael B. Jordan is the engine behind Sinners and will inevitably reappear once awards campaigning kicks back into high gear. Plus, we’re about to see Leonardo DiCaprio back in the conversation when Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another debuts in two weeks. And we’re all anxiously awaiting Timothée Chalamet’s arrival when Marty Supreme hits theaters later this year.
What will these actors have to do to stand out in such a crowded field? Campaigning is important; just ask last year’s winner, Adrien Brody. The bigger movie stars—the Clooneys, McConaugheys—will have to get out there and share their stories in a more personal way, while those that aren’t as familiar with voters, like Moura, will need to introduce themselves. May the odds be ever in their favor. |
