To me, it’s less about screen time, and more about how the film frames its characters. A character can be in a whole movie, but if the movie always frames them in support of other actors then to me that’s supporting.
I can agree with that, I think the best example of that Christof Waltz in Django Unchained. Despite his screen time being well over an hour, the main protagonist is Jamie Foxx (Django) and Christoph (Dr. Schultz) is supporting him all throughout the movie.
Whats interesting is that Viola's Role in the Broadway Adaptation of Fences won Lead Actress at the Tony Awards. People were so confused as to why she was nominated in the supporting role when she gave a lead performance and had ample screen time.
The same thing happened to Jennifer Hudson for Dreamgirls. Effie was the main character of the play and the movie. in fact, Jennifer Holliday won the Tony for Lead Actress but then JHud won the Oscar for Best Supporting
@@rabidheartbeats5953yeah good points. I always assumed Jennifer Hudson went supporting because the movie made Beyonces character the lead (her role was much bigger in the film than the play) and Beyoncé was heavily campaigning for an Oscar nomination Also Jennifer Hudson wasn’t even listed on the poster for the movie 💀 so she probably didn’t have the star power to go lead, especially against Meryl, Helen, Judi, Penelope and Kate But yes, technically Effie is the lead character of Dreamgirls
@@bryanalstoncoxing Jennifer Hudson is probably the only person who has ever outshined Beyoncé and will be the only one to do so given how huge a star Beyoncé is. That is pure talent right there.
@@raymondtitano3819 But she lost in Ma Rainey. Because in the history of the OSCARS only ONE black actress has won for lead role and that was half-white Halle Berry.
Christoph Waltz for Django Unchained annoyed me a bit when I saw the film sometime after his win. Firstly he was in 80-90% of it so arguably co-lead and secondly that slot could have gone to Leonardo DiCaprio whose scene-stealing role in that movie was most definitely supporting.
I was trying to remember Leo was nominated for Django unchained and supporting because he killed that he probably would’ve done his Oscar, but probably didn’t wanna win his first one in the support role.
I really hate that win not only because of this but also Philip Seymour Hoffman was nominated in that category for The Master that year which is one of my favorite performances of all time. Much much better than Waltz’s very good performance in Django in my opinion. (Though, PSH is also probably a co lead but if it’s gonna be category fraud anyway I’ll just stick with what I like better)
Brando was totally supporting in The Godfather. I don’t want to defer to screentime, but Brando’s in it so little I feel like he’d get an ‘and’ credit if it came out today.
@@TitanicHorseRacingLover "his presence is felt through the film" is a totally irrelevant argument. There are characters who don't appear in films whose "presence are felt through the film", and plenty of one-scene performances that do that. It has no business as a criterion.
@@TitanicHorseRacingLover maybe, but ultimately the film is about Michael and his ascendency into ‘Godfather’. Brando’s character is really a supporting player to his story
Yeah Meryl was technically the supporting player in that film, she only had one scene in the whole movie where Anne Hathaway wasn’t present/we weren’t seeing things from Anne’s POV Meryl probably would’ve won Best Supporting Actress in 2006 if she had campaigned in that category
And Forest Whitaker for the Last King of Scotland. I'm happy he won, but James McAvoy's Character was the lead. Forest's character was a central figure but by no means the lead as the story is told through James' character's point of view.
I’m surprised i didn’t hear you talk about Lakeith Stanfield being supporting in Judas and the Black Messiah. That was the craziest nomination i’ve seen since I started following the oscars
Perhaps it was excluded because LaKeith Stanfield actually campaigned as lead and was placed in supporting by the Academy itself. 🤔 yeah, that one was very weird. I'm hoping this year something like that happens to Lilly Gladstone. 🤭
Yeah, that makes zero sense. Even though he's a polarizing character, he is the main character and the entire movie is his POV. I'd be curious to ask them who they consider the lead of that movie, Martin Sheen??😂😂
A case I have always thought of was Dev Patel in Lion from 2016. Patel plays the main character of the movie, its his story, but Patel is only in the second half. The first half is about the main character as a child. So I understand why Patel is in supporting actor due to limited screen time but it still isn't really a supporting role. Patel takes over as lead in Lion.
oh that's interesting! reminds me of his breakout role in slumdog millionaire, where he's in parts of the beginning of the film (the gameshow scenes) but since most of the movie is flashbacks of his childhood/teen years his role primarily picks up in the final third of the movie. he got a BAFTA best actor nomination for that, so there would be precedence for saying his role in lion is a lead performance.
Yeah that’s the first one I remember being weirded out by. His face is on the poster, he’s playing the main character. They did it to guarantee that he’d get nominated but I could have seen him in lead, taking the spot of Viggo Mortensen in Captain Fantastic
It’s an interesting topic when discussing duel roles, when 2 actors play the same character. I think about when both Olivia Colman and Jesse Buckley were both nominated for playing the same character in The Lost Daughter.
Ironically Geoffrey Rush won as a lead despite only appear in the 2nd half on the Shine. The first half his character as a youngster was played by another actor
For me, the one nomination that hurts the most was Mahershala Ali's for "Green Book." He was definitely the co-lead of the film and his win in supporting actor cancelled out easily the best supporting performance of the year, and one of my all time favorites: Richard E. Grant in "Can You Ever Forgive Me?," a performance so good that I will always think in my heart he was the true winner of the Oscar that year.
I don't agree, I thought Ali deserved it that year for Green Book based on the fact that he had more screen time with the character than he had in his other Oscar win for Moonlight.
@@BFA100I'm confused by your statement. He deserved best supporting actor, because he had more screentime than his best supporting actor win for moonlight? I don't follow that logic at all
@@BFA100 That's a weird analogy. His performance in Moonlight was a true supporting performance. His performance in Green Book was a lead performance. Richard E. Grant's performance was a perfect supporting performance and far more deserving of the Oscar. I would have given it to Grant over Ali anyway. I thought it was a better performance.
I believe Viola Davis was basically to sure up the win. The Academy is very unpredictable. I do think her Role in The Help was more Supporting than Fences.
She had 46 minutes of screentime she’s a lead, and in Fences she had 53 minutes of screentime and she won a Tony in lead. Viola would’ve won 2 Oscars in lead in my opinion
I think Viola knew that they wanted Emma to win her category. She couldn’t take her chances so she positioned herself to get whatever trophy she could. They weren’t going to make Emma wait 20 years to win like they did Viola. Unfortunate.
I can understand why Viola decided to campaign for supporting. The Academy still has a ways to go in terms of inclusion. The Best Lead Actress Oscar is almost exclusively white outside of Halle Berry(biracial) and Michelle Yeoh.
💯👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾……..After Halle 20 yrs later and We still have NO BEST ACTRESS FROM A BLACK PERFORMER!!!…OSCARS ARE RIGGED!!!!…. And Yes I COMPLETELY AGREE VIOLA’s Performance Was TOTALLY A BEST ACTRESS LEAD!!!!
Exactly, Black women don’t do well in Best Actress and I think Viola Davis and her team took that into consideration, especially given the she herself lost Best Actress to Meryl Streep a few years before
@@anusthing and I love Holly Hunter in The Piano but that Oscar 100% should have went to Angela Bassett!!! I would even argue Whoopi Goldberg should have won over Geraldine Page !!
My dad was not happy that Haley Joel Osment was nominated in the "supporting" category, instead of "lead" for The Sixth Sense. I tried explaining to him that not only was Bruce Willis a well-established star with top billing, but the film begins and ends with his character rather than Osment's. My dad was not having it, he strongly believed that Osment was playing A main character, at least, although not THE main character. Similar to Jennifer Connelly, Frances McDormand appears kind of late in Fargo...and yet, she WON in the "lead" category. Of course, McDormand got top billing in Fargo. She didn't play second fiddle to anyone like Brando, Russell Crowe or Tom Cruise. In your opinion, have there been any performances in ensemble casts ( such as The Big Chill or Contagion, where there is no one specific main character) that deserved to be nominated in Oscar's "lead" category?
i kind of agree with your dad. bruce willis is definitely the lead in that film but i think there is a strong argument to be made that haley joel osment is co-lead. the film is primarily about him. he has a significant amount of screen time without bruce willis. at the very least the scene with his mom in the car near the end is a lead actor moment for me.
I think though in ensembles Jack Lemmon in Glengarry Glen Ross, Matt Damon in Syriana, Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction would make sense to be nominated for lead actor.
@@suarezguy I certainly would have given Sam Jackson a leading nomination, as he seemed to be the most prominent character in his section of the film. It was Travolta who got a lead nomination while Jackson was nominated for supporting. Such are the politics of the movie business.
@@CineRam Travolta, Jackson and Willis all have a claim to be the closest to a main character in the film and yet I think Jackson was both most the main character and also did the best acting among them.
@@suarezguy Jackson certainly gave the most compelling performance of the the three. Since the movie is told in chapters, and each of those three men essentially headlined their own chapter, they could've all been considered for a leading nomination. I believe that since he had the most screen-time and he received first billing in the credits, John Travolta was the default choice for a lead nomination. But my choice would have been Jackson as well.
I absolutely agree with all of these, however I remember at the time I didn’t care which category Timothy Hutton was nominated in, I just wanted him to win for Ordinary People … I was a teenager and his performance there left me breathless !!!
Timothy Hutton's performance was extraordinary and an Oscar was well deserved-I completely agree that it should have been a Best Actor award. I still think Mary Tyler Moore should have won Best Actress for Ordinary People. She was so well known for her role in her show on TV and that character is the complete opposite of Beth. Yet, her performance was brilliant-subtle looks, subtle inflections and we begin to see who that character is. She transforms the person we all believed her to be, because of her iconic role in the MTM show and becomes this deeply troubled soul-just pure acting. The fact is, everyone in that film performed excellently.
@@pommie5093agree with you, except that I think Mary Taylor Moore should had been nominated and won as best supporting actress. At the end, it's Conrad's story rather than Beth's story.
@@giovannyespinoza6013 Good point, you're right-she should have been nominated as supporting actress. Exactly, it is Conrad's story and he should have been nominated as Best Actor.
Great video, dude. This is a hot button issue for me. People will say “it’s not about screen time”….but it is. As you said in your final example, it’s not fair to put up true supporting performances against performances with 40+ minutes. It just isn’t! Having performances much longer than 30 minutes defeats the entire purpose of recognizing supporting performances in the first place. Your Carol example is important, but even there, you float the possibility of Blanchet being in supporting. She has over an hour of screen time. That would be vastly unfair to the other supporting nominees. Both women in that film should be in lead. The same can be said for Notes on a Scandal. I know people are going to come back to “it’s not about screentime…” but I won’t budge on this. It’s a hill I’m willing to die on.
Eh, for me it’s more about they’re effect and the story and the rest of the characters. Ie, who are they supporting exactly? Take Pitt for example, in my opinion they’re both main characters and give leading performances. It’s not necessarily about they’re screen-time, merely about how the film frames them.
@@samuelbarber6177 I take your point but screen time has to be an important consideration. Otherwise, let’s just do away with the supporting categories
It isn't about anything. The difference between actor and supporting actor isn't in the rules and it completely depends on which category you get enough votes to get the nomination.
🤔 I see your point about Connelly, but I have to disagree. Her character's entire arc in that story is rooted on being Crowe's link to reality, and therefore his support. If the movie focused more on her personal life outside of her relationship with Crowe, I would agree with you, but as the screenplay is written she is there entirely to showcase how John's illness impacted his later life as a father and husband. Connelly's character is reacting to his behavior for almost her entire time on screen. She is in a good chunk of the movie, but like Ledger in the Dark Knight, sometimes supporting performances require much more screentime in order to best support the lead character in driving the story. So in my eyes, Connelly was a perfect example of a Supporting Actress.
I don’t know, I think Jennifer Connelly’s role in A Beautiful Mind was very similar of that of Reese Witherspoon in Walk The Line. Both had a significant amount of screen time to be considered a lead but they are not the main focus of the film but are both supporting their male leads. But Reese ended up winning and lead and vice versa with Jennifer.
@@davy209 It's been a while since I've seen Walk the Line so I may be misremembering some things, but even though the movie started about Johnny's youth I seem to remember the main focus of the film being about his relationship and marriage with June Carter. How they kind of had a double act going for a while on stage, and how she kind of had other relationships going on. I remember the heart of the film being about their chemistry and relationship. In A Beautiful Mind the marriage John and Alicia had was instrumental as she probably saved his life, but the focus on the film was much more about John's internal struggle with mental illness. I'd probably have to go back and rewatch Walk the Line to be sure, but I remember it really felt more like a love story than A Beautiful Mind was.
You’re definitely right, Walk The Line is, at its center core, a love story between Johnny and June, so I totally get why Reese was nominated in the lead actress category, despite having half the amount of screen time as Joaquin Phoenix. Jennifer Connelly’s role in A Beautiful Mind also felt just as important to the story as Reese was in Walk the Line. But both role’s definitely blurred the lines between being a lead and supporting and valid points can be made for both cases. Both Jennifer and Reese could have been in either lead or supporting and it would’ve made sense!
Exactly, I agree. I see her role as similar to Ke Huy Quan's supporting role opposite Michelle Yeoh in EEAAO. He had a LOT of screentime and is the only substantial male character in the show. But his arc is all relating to Evelyn. So he's a supporting actor. An amazing one. Same for Jennifer.
@@samuelbarber6177 On par with Alicia Vikander in Best Supporting Actress for The Danish Girl. You could’ve easily swapped Jennifer Lawrence from Joy with Vikander and no one would’ve cared. Same with swapping Gary Oldman from Mank with either Stanfield or Delroy Lindo in Da 5 Bloods.
2002 is interesting too! I think you can easily argue that Nicole Kidman's 'Virginia Woolf' in "The Hours" was a supporting role due to screen time (she was also 3rd billed). At the same time, you can argue the Catherine Zeta-Jones 'Velma Kelly' was a lead in "Chicago". Both Roxie and Velma have always been nominated in "Lead Actress" at the Tony Awards. In this case, I think it was setting her up for a win...and wisely so! However, I think Zeta-Jones actually had more screen time than Kidman did!
It’s crazy how Nicole was the lead in The Hours, especially considering her costar Julianne Moore was nominated in supporting despite having a bit more screen time than Nicole!
Fun fact about the viola in supporting conversation, Denzel did an interview somewhere and made a comment on how he thought she should’ve been competing in the lead category. And I mean she did win the lead actress tony for the same role.
But they've only given ONE black woman an Oscar for lead, Haley Berry, and she is half white. Black women know they can't win so why go through all that nonsense?
What a fun video! Brian, can you please, please, please do a video on 1973 Supporting Actor, How Joel Grey won? This was an extraordinary win because it was never certain. Some people think Al Pacino protesting gave this to Grey, but Cabaret won 8 Oscars that year, and The Godfather won 3. Grey’s performance is a true supporting role, and the movie itself rivaled The Godfather for a win. I think it would be great to hear your take on this, as I haven’t seen many videos covering it at length. 😎😎😎
Reminds me of taking a test on The Great Gatsby in high school when another student thought Nick Carraway was the main character because the story was from his point of view.
I agree about Ali in Green Book, Viola in Fences, Jaime in Collateral, Tatum in Paper Moon = actually I agree with all! You may need to do an extended version of this - Top 25 Category Fraud !!
Yes, everyone in ordinary people was physically the ideal but Sutherland was not and reaction was that he gave a great subtle realistic performance but physically hard to look at in close- ups that Redford insisted on attempting to get audience to become involved in the interior life of the character. Sutherland is not ugly but his odd mannerisms and tics are great for the story( obviously the pretty wife is there because he’s a provider but nowhere near her level showing Beth Jarret was living in her safe environment controlling him , giving in to his needs in beginning sequence when they go to bed . She obliges letting us know she fulfilled her role as dutiful wife. He wasn’t nominated because it was not easy for audience to Want to see him in a close up. That was something Redford the director could’ve skirted allowing the father and son relationship more apparent that the father was blind to his wife’s control and lack of true love . Sotherland should’ve been nominated .
Julia Roberts in 'August: Osage County' bugs me the most. Not just because Barbara is a lead and not just because the story revolves around that character, and not Violet, but mainly because it took the oxygen out of the room to get the real Supporting Actresse in the movie - Esteemed Character Actress Margo Martindale a nomination! Somethings she's never got!
I’m glad you think Viola Davis would have won in lead for Fences because unfortunately, it’s still rare that black actresses are even nominated in the lead category. However, I’m doubtful that La La Land would have only won Director that year.
She had a strong chance but I too doubt it because Emma Stone was the "it" girl which proves to be very attractive in the female categories. Viola did have narrative and the role on her side, though. Such a tough call. 🤔
Yeah Viola made the right decision and decided to go for EGOT rather than take the chance at Best Actress and be disappointed The odds are that she would’ve lost against Emma Stone, who was at the peak of her career, was in the most nominated movie of the year, and is also white
Only ONE black woman has ever won for lead and she is half white. Black women only get nominated for roles in which they are maids or down-trotten. They would NEVER get a best actress nod for something like LaLa Land, My Cousin Vinny, Mighty Aphrodite, Pretty Woman. Nope. Hollywood only recognizes beaten or sexually objective black women. Maids, hookers, victims of abuse. THAT IS ALL.
One that really annoys me, is Christoph Waltz in Django Unchained. He was the co-lead with Jamie Foxx. The reason it annoys me so much is because Samuel L Jackson gave one of the best supporting performances I’ve ever seen in any movie. I was sure he would get a supporting actor nomination and should win. It had never even crossed my mind that Christoph Waltz would be nominated in that category. But he was, and Jackson didn’t get nominated. And by the way, another annoying example was from the same year. Philip Seymour Hoffman. Co-lead with Joaquin Phoenix in The Master but was nominated in supporting.
Blanchett and Mara were lead Brad was supporting. I think Connelly could be either but the focus wasn’t on her. Possibly the same can be said about Davis Hutton and O’Neal were leads
Agree in the case of Pitt's role, as he's supporting a central character the film largely revolves around. Definitely could argue a gray area's involved in cases like these, but there are a lot of movies with one central character, and everyone else really supports that character.
You missed 3 big ones, Ethan Hawke was in every scene of Training Day and yet was nominated for supporting actor, he had more scenes than Denzel Washington who won for best actor, Geena Davis was the female lead in The Accidental Tourist not supporting and Jessica Lange was the female lead in Tootsie but won because she lost to best actress in Frances to Meryl Streep for Sophie's Choice, he costar in Tootsie, Teri Garr, was a true supporting actress and should have won that year.
Hawke had only slightly more scenes than Washington and the movie was about both characters but still probably at least slightly more about Washington's.
Training Day was Denzel Washington's movie, come on. Ethan Hawke was great in it but the story, performance, and screen presence made it abundantly clear who the lead was and it wasn't Hawke.
You would think the Hawke pick for Supporting Actor would be more controversial if he had won and yet George Clooney *did* win Best Supporting Actor for Syriana and most people didn't care, were not bothered by it.
With the way that the biggest Oscars (Lead actor/actress and Director) seem as often to be recognition for a distinguished career as one particular movie, there seems to be a concern that it not go to someone who is brand new and their great performance might be a one-off or a fluke somehow. So the supporting often becomes “best acting by a new face” and it’s where the child/teen actors and debuts land, regardless of screen time.
I normally don't enjoy list shows or care about awards shows but I really enjoyed this video. It was really well researched and well argued, even though I haven't seen any of these movies or have much of an idea of Oscars politics, the foundation was really well laid to where I could understand your opinions about them. 👍
River Phoenix in Running on Empty. Very similar situation to the ones you described. The movie was LITERALLY. ABOUT. HIM! But because he was only 17 and no one (understandably) wanted to go up against Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, he was totally misplaced in supporting.
@BFA100 Correct. Filming was August-October of '87. Movie was released in '88, and the nomination came out in early '89. He was 16-17 when he gave his performance. That's what I meant.
I Completely disagree. The movie was about his family, and how choices can effect your loved ones. Much like in Ordinary people, River Phoenix and Timothy Hutton were our lens to see the story of their families and their choices/dysfunction. In both cases these were young teenagers who were relatively new to acting holding their own and then some with great experienced performers. It would have been a travesty if RP hadn't been awarded for that performance.
Phoenix was not new by then, he already started appearing in films three years earlier with Explorers and he did not win the Oscar for Running on Empty so then you think it's a travesty.@@timpo717
Excellent video, Brian. I agree with each of the top 10 choices. Some honorable mentions: David Nivens - Separate Tables (won for Lead Actor for 23 minutes of screentime) Patricia Neal - Hud (won lead with only 22 minutes of screentime) Patty Duke - The Miracle Worker (supporting performance win that should have been in lead) Louise Fletcher - One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (won for Lead Actress with only 22 minutes of screentime) Nicole Kidman - The Hours (with 30 minutes of screentime, less than Julianne Moore's 33 minutes though I'm aware Moore was rightfully nominated for lead in Far From Heaven that year)
Hi there. Lead has nothing to do with screen time. It has to do with the weight of the character on the story. The Hours had three leads : Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore. Julianne was nominated as Supporting because she was already a strong favorite for Best Lead with Far From Heaven. If anything was fraudulent, it was Julianne's nomination as a Supporting Role for The Hours, since she was a Lead.
It's entirely at their whim. Witness both LaKeith Stanfield and Daniel Kaluuya being nommed in Supporting Actor when they are the title characters in Judas and the Black Messiah.
Great topic and video! I'm thrilled that you included Timothy Hutton here. He's the central player, and the film is (literally) about him, but they threw him in the supporting category? Please... but I guess it paid off for Hutton. My personal bugaboo on the topic came in 1950, when Anne Baxter campaigned for the lead category, which led to a predictable voter split and prevented Bette Davis (!!!) from claiming her 3rd (and most deserved) Oscar. Ironically, Baxter's insistence on being a "lead" reflected perfectly the personality of the character she played in the film... and probably reveals A LOT about her personally, as well. As anyone might have predicted, BOTH Baxter AND Davis went home empty-handed that evening. I've hated Baxter my entire adult life for that stunt. Sorry... not sorry.
With regards to Fences, Mary Alice in the original Broadway production was nominated and won for featured actress instead of lead, which is probably why Viola decided to run for supporting in the Oscars, because in the Academy history only Halle Berry has won for lead being an African American woman
This year we've got Ryan Gosling in Barbie as supporting actor. Ridiculous. Other category shifts: Dev Patel - Lion Pacino - The Irishman Stone - The Favourite Michelle Williams - The Fabelmans and Manchester by the Sea Waltz - Django Unchained Blanchett - Notes on a Scandal Streep - Devil Wears Prada
@@DoncoEntAgain That is true. I watched it recently again and I was surprised because I remembered she had a bigger role. Still, it was a very transcendent role.
I did not like the Hallie Steinfeild nomination in the supporting category for a new main reasons: 1. Back in 2008, the Academy made a huge stink about Kate Winslet campaigning in the supporting category for The Reader and they’d pushed it into the leading category, but chose not to do the same thing with Hallie’s role in True Grit, a couple of years later. If the Academy weren’t going to remain consistent throughout, then why bother even doing it in the first place? 2. Hallie’s performance in True Grit was, without a doubt, a lead (she’s the main protagonist!) and it felt like cheating because it took the fifth spot away from other great performances that are actual supporting roles, like Mila Kunis in Black Swan. 3. The Academy needs to stop nominating leading performances in supporting categories just because the actors are kids. It’s just insulting to insinuate that a kid is not the lead in their film, because of their age. Thank God they didn’t do that to Quavanzene’ Wallis in “Beast of The Southern Wild”!
Nicole Kidman in The Hours had least amount of screen time that her two costars yet was out as lead and won. Julianne Moore with more screen time was supporting, but was lead nominated for Far From Heaven and I think should have won for that. Nicole was ok, but not Oscar worthy especially as lead.
Thought both Kidman and Moore were great in the film, and both in lead roles, too bad they weren't just both nominated for lead but understandable the studio wouldn't want to have them competing in same category. Though they were really both leads I guess I can see that Virginia Woolf was slightly more central overall.
Another person who should be mentioned is Christoph Walz the second time. Granted nobody was beating Daniel Day Lewis for actor. But he’s really the heart of Django Unchained. Plus as far as screen time goes he’s right up with both Tatum O’Neal and Mahershala Ali in Green Book. If you look up the reported screen time of every acting nominee. There are mere seconds separating the 3 longest supporting actor/actress winners. Tatum O’Neal 1:06:58. Mahershala Ali (2) 1:06:32. Christoph Walz (2) 1:06:17.
With Tatum O’Neal there was an actual Oscar rule that caused the category mishap. Back then kids were always in the supporting category no matter the role. I think you forgot an important one… Catherine Zeta-Jones in Chicago. Now I absolutely ❤ that performance and the actress in general but Velma Kelly is a lead. There is zero room for debate. The leads are Velma and Roxie Hart. The supporting females are Mama Morton( Queen Latifah) and Mary Sunshine (Christine Baranski ), which a larger role in the stage version. Amos Hart ( John C Reilly) is also supporting. If any role is on the border it’s Richard Gere as Billy Flynn.
Yeah you can believe all you want that Viola Davis would have won Best Actress but history has proven this was a wise call. Despite the Best Picture loss, the Academy loved La La Land and I do think Emma Stone would have won over Viola even though Viola had the better performance. Tatum O’ Neal in Best Supporting for that film is crazy but again I am not sure that they would have given her that Oscar if she was in Best Actress and that would have been worse.
I do think that one of the main reasons why Viola decided to campaign in the supporting category, instead of lead, because she did not want to compete against Emma Stone, who she’s close friends with, and why compete against a friend when there’s another option to where both of them can win? I honestly don’t like category fraud and the Oscars need to establish clear rules in these categories. Viola should’ve won for in lead, while Naomie Harris should have won for supporting in “Moonlight”, in my opinion.
The saddest thing about this is that the performers who deserved to be in that category are robbed of their nominations and/or wins, especially those who have never been nominated yet at all.
I totally agree about Tatum O’Neal’s incredible performance in Paper Moon. I came across that movie on accident and was astounded that movie existed and I’d never heard of it.
I’m also glad he mentioned kids not being allowed to be nominated for lead. With only a few notable exceptions. The first being Keisha Castle Hughes in 2004 at 13 for Whale Rider. The second being of course Quvenzhane Wallis in 2013 for Beasts Of The Southern Wild when she was 9 years 5 months or so. The other most notable exception being Jackie Cooper. He was nominated at 9 years 2 months for Skippy. But it was the only category he could be nominated in. The supporting categories were introduced in 1937 ceremony. Plus the intermittent juvenile Oscar was introduced in 1935.
Another awesome list! Honorable mention: Daniel Kaluuya (Judas and the Black Messiah). It's even in the title. On another topic: We need a reverse category fraud video. Cases where the actor is arguably supporting but goes lead and gets the Oscar nomination. A few examples come to mind: 1. Anthony Hopkins (The Silence of the Lambs) 2. Olivia Colman (The Favourite) 3. Michelle Williams (The Fablemans) 4. Nicole Kidman (The Hours) 5. Patricia Neal (Hud) 6. David Niven (Separate Tables) 7. Lilly Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon 🤭)
I'm pretty sure Lily Gladstone is gonna win Best Actress now that she's committing category fraud. Especially since it would be historic for an Indigenous actor to win and the Academy loves that.
All three women in the favorite are leads, which is rare, but I think the movie balances the stories of the three very well. But speaking of short performances, one of my favorites in that area would be Geraldine Page, who received a best actress nomination for a role of 20min or less for Interiors (1978)
other nominees: Annette Bening (American Beauty, Spacey's obviously the lead), Meryl Streep (The Devil Wears Prada, Anne Hathaway's the lead, although you can argue Meryl's the title character), Talia Shire (Rocky, obviously Stallone is the lead), Denzel Washington for Training Day (Ethan Hawke is the lead), Leo for Blood Diamond (Djimon Hounsou is the lead)
Brian!! This is an AWESOME topic, I'll be watching after work but just wanted to say I LOVE your channel and I LOVE the ideas you come up with! Keep doing your thing my friend!!!
Just came here to say I will always stick by that Viola is supporting in Fences, her character isnt developed enough as Troy and Jennifer Connelly was definitely supporting in A Beautiful Mind
If I remember correctly, the Seventies were a tough time for female leads. They had a tough time filling slots some years. Also, Ann-Margaret was nominated in lead for a supporting role.
@@jonathanvelazquezph.d.2719 Like Anthony Hopkins, most critics agreed that Louise Fletcher deserved Best Actrees forr her short screen time. Two of the best, most evil in cinema history.
@@slc2466 in 1972, Ann was nominated for best supporting in Carnal Knowledge. In 1962, she won the Grammy for Best New Artist. What a force of nature. Ann is only three years older than Roger Daultry.
The Top 10 ones that Brian Rowe left out which I would consider category fraud: *Winner *Walter Matthau (The Fortune Cookie) * Peter Ustinov (Topkapi) Ethan Hawke (Training Day) *George Burns (The Sunshine Boys) * Christian Bale (The Fighter) Robert Preston (Victor/Victoria) LaKeith Stanfield (Judas and the Black Messiah) *Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls) *Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained) River Phoenix (Running on Empty)
I thought Christian Bale in The Fighter, though a major role and presence, was still very much supporting role, much more supporting than lead or co-lead.
Jennifer Hudson for supporting Actress in Dreamgirls, that is a LEADING roll. Then that season they forced a for your consideration for Beyoncè in lead actress in the 2007 award season
It’s crazy that Beyoncé was considered the “lead” in Dream Girks when she had lesser screen time than Jennifer Hudson. Obviously, Beyoncé was campaigned as the “lead” only because of her name recognition and star power.
My choice is Geena Davis in The Accidental Tourist. It's an OK performance - I think she is miscast since the character is supposed to be homely and irritating. Neither of which she is in the film. But there is no way that it is a supporting performance. She is in the film far more than second billed Kathleen Turner and is the film's leading lady. It also kills me that her lead performance prevented a true supporting performance from Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl.
He was really co-lead but I also think there's a lot to the view that the movie is at least a bit more about Alonzo than Jake so Washington/Alonzo was even more the lead and Hawke/Jake supporting.
The biggest Oscar fraud happened in 1994, when Tommy Lee Jones stole Ralph Fiennes' fucking Oscar. I mean... Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List: becomes one of the most memorable villains. TLJ in The Fugitive: just acts like TLJ, cool and commanding. And you give the Oscar to the latter? Really?
The 'lead performance' should be based on the protagonist. Whose story are we watching? In True Grit, it is Matty Ross' story, and Rooster and LeBeouf are Steinfeld parts of it. Matty is the one driving the story forward, so she should get nominated for Best Actress. Jennifer Connelly was supporting in A Beautiful Mind. She has plenty of screen time, but it is John Nash's story. Take her out, and you still have a story. Take out Crowe's role, and the story disappears. So Jennifer was fair to be nominated for Best Supporting.
I did not like the Hallie Steinfeild nomination in the supporting category for a new main reasons: 1. Back in 2008, the Academy made a huge stink about Kate Winslet campaigning in the supporting category for The Reader and they’d pushed it into the leading category, but chose not to do the same thing with Hallie’s role in True Grit, a couple of years later. If the Academy weren’t going to remain consistent throughout, then why bother even doing it in the first place? 2. Hallie’s performance in True Grit was, without a doubt, a lead (she’s the main protagonist!) and it felt like cheating because it took the fifth spot away from other great performances that are actual supporting roles, like Mila Kunis in Black Swan. 3. The Academy needs to stop nominating leading performances in supporting categories just because the actors are kids. It’s just insulting to insinuate that a kid is not the lead in their film, because of their age. Thank God they didn’t do that to Quavanzene’ Wallis in “Beast of The Southern Wild”!
@@davy209you’ve copy pasted this in response to multiple comments, come on. At least tweak your comment and pretend like it’s responding to the person you’re talking to
I disagree but it’s a tough one. I don’t feel like his character was actually supporting anyone else, both him and DiCaprio seemed to get a pretty equal share of the run and plot.
@samuelbarber6177 I truly felt like Dicaprio was Lead and Pitt was supporting. Just because they're alongside each other doesn't mean they're both leads
@@stevenstevenson5303 yes, but I don’t feel like Pitt was supporting DiCaprio’s story. It just felt like they each had different stories and were both the film’s leads. The same way a film like Network or Pulp Fiction has several leading roles
@samuelbarber6177 I see you're point, and yeah that makes sense. Idk I guess I'm just not as harsh with Pitts oscar for Once Upon a Time cause it was my favorite movie that year and it was great to see Brad Pitt win the oscar. Leading or Supporting it was a great role.
Totally agreed with Collateral and especially The Godfather. The Godfather is literally the story of Michael Corleone and his rise. Brando was the lead in the first 1/3rd of the movie but then moved behind in the second 1/3rd and is barely even there in the last 1/3rd
Unfortunately Viola Davis’s winning for best actress in Fences, while deserved, probably wasn’t going to happen and she knew it. To this day not one mono-racial black actress has ever won best lead actress at the oscars. Not once in 95 years.
the category fraud that I despise is Mary Badham for To Kill a Mockingbird. Like, Scout is the one who narrates the story and TKAM is from Scout's perspective! I was legitimately shocked to see that she was nominated for supporting
@@suarezguy Agreed. Just because we see the movie and people in it through the lens of a particular character doesn't make them the lead actor or actress. Also, there seems to be a lot of discrediting of young people in movies being in a supporting role. Whether they are in the movie or have a lot of screen time, a child actress is never going to be a lead in a movie with Gregory Peck. This is the same reason I think Timothy Hutton was not category fraud. He was a young actor with limited experience in a movie with hollywood heavyweights Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore. He too was our lens for that story and had a ton of screen time, but the main character in Ordinary People was the family as a whole, not any one character. All just my humble opinion.
Looking back at it, if Joan Crawford had swallowed her pride and campaigned in supporting, she would of had a much better chance at an Oscar nomination since they didn’t care all that much about category fraud and have nominated co-leads in both lead and supporting (just like in The Miracle Worker).
I 100% agree. Complete category fraud. Also, Gregory Peck was category fraud too. She has more screen time than Peck. If Peck was nominated and won for supporting, maybe Peter O’Toole would’ve for his timeless performance in Lawrence of Arabia.
I agree with the number 1 choice, but I always feel you omit the Academy has course corrected this and has nominated child actresses for lead: Keisha Castle Hughes and Quvenzhané Wallis come to mind
Loved you mentioning Hopkins' work at the outset. I agree in his case and with Patricia Neal in "Hud" they are, respectively, the male and female leads of their movies supporting a central character with more screen time, but they make such a strong impression their wins are still warranted, and all the more impressive given their limited time onscreen.
I have no idea where people get the Hopkins notion from. Third best performance of the character. Totally decent performance in a good thriller, but doesn't even come close to the mythological status there was a media blitz to create for it. Was clearly deliberately set up at the time to self-declare as legendary and some people just eat it up. It's a supporting performance, and probably one not worthy of any Oscar.
@@fromomelastocarcosa3575 Curious about this "deliberately set up" notion, as "Lambs" was released in February of 1991, not during the late-year awards season, which would better fit the idea of a "set up" to win awards. If Hopkins really gave such an average performance, it doesn't make sense his work would be remembered by voters months later, when so many other Oscar contenders were being released. You can downplay his performance, but the majority of voters deemed his work powerful enough to earn the Best Actor Oscar, even with limited screen time.
@@fromomelastocarcosa3575 It's a violent thriller, some people would even say horror, movie and he is in it for 18 minutes nominated as a lead in a great year for film, the deck could not possibly have been more stacked against that win. And you're going to sit here with a straight face trying to suggest it's artificial? One of the most iconic performances in film history, remains incredibly popular decades later, and you're like 'there was a media blitz that made the sheeple like it'. I can say only: lol. If media blitzes worked like that, you'd think those PR people would do them more often.
For me, the 2017 Oscars had three blatant examples of category fraud. Viola Davis isn't just the female lead in Fences, she's THE lead, period. I agree that she would have had a good chance of winning best actress that year and for me the whole thing is made worse by the fact that Ruth Negga got nominated for best actress that year for what was much more of a supporting role in Loving. Even though she played the biggest female character in that movie and is featured throughout most of it, her character doesn't do very much and it feels much more like Joel Edgerton's movie. That was also the year when Dev Patel got nominated for best supporting actor in Lion, even though he was the clear lead of that film. But since best actor was kinda stacked that year, the studio decided to launch a campaign for him in the supporting category, using the logic that the little kid who played the child version of the same character in the first half of the film was the lead. However, the most egregious example of category fraud that I can remember in recent years was Judas and the Black Messiah, where Daniel Kaluuya and LaKieth Stanfield were co-leads (they shared top billing and every poster I've seen for the film features the two of them and nobody else) and they both got nominated for best supporting actor.
It's not "category fraud" when there's no criteria in the rules regarding those categories. It's pretty much up to the people voting in the nomination process.
Yes! I think it came down to acknowledging the past issues with Oscar votes - a Black woman winning lead actress was so rare, supporting was the "safer" bet. Michelle Williams should've won supporting and Viola Davis lead.
@@nashjillian4450 Only ONE black woman has ever won lead actress, Halle Barry and she is half white. That Viola wasn't even nominated for Woman King tells you how big of a problem the Oscars have with black women.
I do think that one of the main reasons why Viola decided to campaign in supporting, instead of lead, was because she did not want to compete against her Emma Stone, who she’s close friends with, and why compete against a friend when there’s another option to where both of them can win? I honestly don’t like category fraud and the Oscars need to establish clear rules in these categories. Viola should’ve won as a lead and Naomie Harris should’ve won in supporting.
I'm surprised you didn't use the most recent example. Stephanie Hsu in EEAAO is in no way a supporting performance. It's a mother-daughter story, and she's the second female lead. However, I guess the logic was to focus on Michelle Yeoh for lead and avoid any potential vote splitting.
@@johnnolan5579I'm sorry, but I completely disagree. You could completely remove Waymond from the story and lose none of its message. You cannot say the same about Joy/Jobu. Without that character, there is no movie. She's the second female lead.
@@professionalspinner9292 Let's agree to disagree because Yeoh's relationship with her husband is extraordinarily important in the film. While the mother's relationship to her daughter is a focal point, much of the story focuses on how her life would be different in the multiverse including relationships with a woman and, especially her husband.
@@professionalspinner9292if you remove Waymond from the story you would get a different ending. It's from Waymond that she learns to be kind, that being nice is a way to deal with things, she ended helping the people who were figthing against her because of him, she learns that love is the way because of Waymond and his unconditional love and kindness.
I’d be interested in a follow up video focused on a similar idea of category fraud, but it’s looking at Golden Globe nominations where Dramas or Musicals/Comedies are miscategorized
LOL. There probably is a lot of perception, fairly gained, that it's easier to win for Comedy than for Drama category, Drama category usually has a lot more and stronger competition.
I remember watching "Awakenings" and was shocked to find out that Robert De Niro was nominated for Lead Role, instead of Supporting Role, If I remember correctly. Also, how did Robin Williams not get nominated for Lead
I think people don't feel comfortable saying performances nominated as leading should've been nominated as supporting if the performance is iconic and brilliant. Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs and Marlon Brando in The Godfather are clearly supporting.
I still don’t understand why Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz were both nominated for best supporting actress and Olivia Coleman was nominated (and won) for best Actress for The Favourite. Stone and Weisz should have been nominated for best actress and Coleman should have been nominated for best supporting actress. The roles of the former were much larger than that of the latter.
1000% agree. Doesn't matter how much time if you're the lead, as the ones with short times usually have such an impact over the entire movie. I don't think you should be in more than 35% of the movie to be a supporting character. I think it deprives people who will never be a lead in a film from winning an Oscar. I would say Patty Duke also could be here, she was a co-lead and on the screen almost as much as Anne Bancroft.
Says the amount of time spent in a film shouldn't impact the award. Proceeds to use the amount of time spent in the film as evidence for why they should have won a certain award.
I can think of a few people who could've replaced Holly in 93's supporting line up Miriam Margolyes The Age of Innocence,Julianne Moore or Andie MacDowell in Short Cuts,Embeth Davidtz in Schindler's List or Kerry Walker in The Piano.
A couple of others that immediately come to mind: Patty Duke should have been nominated for Best Actress in The Miracle Worker; Simone Signoret should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actress in Room at the Top (even though both won in the actual categories).
The same year Patty Duke won for The Miracle Worker, Mary Badham in To Kill a Mockingbird was nominated in the supporting category too and she had more screentime than Gregory Peck from that same movie who won Best Actor.
Whoa whoa whoa! Brian !!!!!! It’s not just Viola Davis’ decision to went for Best Supporting Actress that year, it was Paramount Picture who made that called ! Don’t blame her, blame the studio, bro !!!!!!!!!
You make a great point. Hopkins as Lecter is the best (or at least top tier) performance of all time, so yeah you can't begrudge the win in that category at all.
One that I always thought was weird was both Lakeith Stanfield and Daniel Kaluuya both nominated for Judas and the Black Messiah. Seriously, isn't Lakeith Stanfield the lead? How can there be 2 supporting actors and no lead?
At least LaKeith Stanfield actually campaigned as lead. It was the Academy's decision to place him in supporting. Which is probably why it didn't make this list.
Yeah, what happened there? My best guess is Julia and Meryl were fighting to both get nominated in lead and Julia decided “Whatever, I’ll just go supporting”
Viola Davis in supporting blocked a win for Naomie Harris whom I think would have changed the narrative and won for her outstanding and heartbreaking work
I really believe Meryl Streep should have campaigned for Best Supporting Actress for "The Devil Wears Prada" and in this case she would definitely have beaten Jennifer Hudson
I don't know. Just like in the case of Anthony Hopkins in the Silence of the Lambs, her character is very crucial to the movie. Sure, the movie focused on Andy, but you could argue that without Miranda, the story won't move forward and Andy wouldn't have gone through the major character development that she had. Her presence is felt all throughout the movie. Hers is definitely a lead performance for me. Emily Blunt, on the other hand, is a true supporting performance
I think Daniel Day-Lewis as Bill the Butcher was appropriate in lead actor category, he was only technically not the main character or, as much or more so, he actually was one of the two main characters.
Lily Gladstone is doing it this year for Killers of The Flower Moon. Don't get me wrong her performance is great but it feels more of a Supporting Actress role than lead.
Ryan Gosling would be category fraud too for this year. He’s being campaigned in supporting instead of lead. He’s pretty much co-lead with Margot Robbie. Similar to Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Brenden Gleeson in The Banshees of Inisherin.
I always thought Louise Fletcher was a supporting character in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. She was arguably the main actress in the movie, but she doesn't have that much screen time. I think that was one of those years when the best actress category was wide open. I think they actually had trouble coming up with five nominees.
I don't see why an actor playing a supporting character can't be nominated for a Leading Actor Category since she was the lead in a Female Role. I think the Oscars blur the line which distinguishes a character and an actor. If Jack Nicholson was a female playing a female character, then Louise Fletcher would have been a Supporting Actress.
To me, it’s less about screen time, and more about how the film frames its characters. A character can be in a whole movie, but if the movie always frames them in support of other actors then to me that’s supporting.
True supporting roles cannot compete with “supporting” performances with lots of screentime. So then the category becomes pointless
Most movies do have multiple leads, though, and even the leads should also support the other ones.
I can agree with that, I think the best example of that Christof Waltz in Django Unchained. Despite his screen time being well over an hour, the main protagonist is Jamie Foxx (Django) and Christoph (Dr. Schultz) is supporting him all throughout the movie.
Ok but Ethan Hawke in training day was absolutely the main lead and the story was from his pov, not Denzel’s. Same with Rooney Mara in Carol
Also a lead character should have an arc. Olivia Colman in The Favourite? No arc.
Whats interesting is that Viola's Role in the Broadway Adaptation of Fences won Lead Actress at the Tony Awards. People were so confused as to why she was nominated in the supporting role when she gave a lead performance and had ample screen time.
She had twice as much screen time as she did in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, for which she was nominated in Lead. 🤨
The same thing happened to Jennifer Hudson for Dreamgirls. Effie was the main character of the play and the movie. in fact, Jennifer Holliday won the Tony for Lead Actress but then JHud won the Oscar for Best Supporting
@@rabidheartbeats5953yeah good points. I always assumed Jennifer Hudson went supporting because the movie made Beyonces character the lead (her role was much bigger in the film than the play) and Beyoncé was heavily campaigning for an Oscar nomination
Also Jennifer Hudson wasn’t even listed on the poster for the movie 💀 so she probably didn’t have the star power to go lead, especially against Meryl, Helen, Judi, Penelope and Kate
But yes, technically Effie is the lead character of Dreamgirls
@@bryanalstoncoxing Jennifer Hudson is probably the only person who has ever outshined Beyoncé and will be the only one to do so given how huge a star Beyoncé is. That is pure talent right there.
@@raymondtitano3819 But she lost in Ma Rainey. Because in the history of the OSCARS only ONE black actress has won for lead role and that was half-white Halle Berry.
Christoph Waltz for Django Unchained annoyed me a bit when I saw the film sometime after his win. Firstly he was in 80-90% of it so arguably co-lead and secondly that slot could have gone to Leonardo DiCaprio whose scene-stealing role in that movie was most definitely supporting.
I was trying to remember Leo was nominated for Django unchained and supporting because he killed that he probably would’ve done his Oscar, but probably didn’t wanna win his first one in the support role.
Ikr!!..
@@TheLauren800I don't think he was nominated.
Really expected to see him on the list! That one bothered me a lot.
I really hate that win not only because of this but also Philip Seymour Hoffman was nominated in that category for The Master that year which is one of my favorite performances of all time. Much much better than Waltz’s very good performance in Django in my opinion.
(Though, PSH is also probably a co lead but if it’s gonna be category fraud anyway I’ll just stick with what I like better)
Brando was totally supporting in The Godfather. I don’t want to defer to screentime, but Brando’s in it so little I feel like he’d get an ‘and’ credit if it came out today.
I agree. I was surprised when he won for lead and that Pacino was in supporting.
His presences is felt throughout the film. THat was a lead role. No doubt. Al should have also been nominated for lead as well. That I agree with.
@@TitanicHorseRacingLover "his presence is felt through the film" is a totally irrelevant argument. There are characters who don't appear in films whose "presence are felt through the film", and plenty of one-scene performances that do that. It has no business as a criterion.
@fromomelastocarcosa3575 The whole film is about The Godfather. Almost everything that happens in the film has to do with Brando's character.
@@TitanicHorseRacingLover maybe, but ultimately the film is about Michael and his ascendency into ‘Godfather’. Brando’s character is really a supporting player to his story
Also Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada. They swapped their roles at the Oscars too and that was just prely based on their reps
Yeah Meryl was technically the supporting player in that film, she only had one scene in the whole movie where Anne Hathaway wasn’t present/we weren’t seeing things from Anne’s POV
Meryl probably would’ve won Best Supporting Actress in 2006 if she had campaigned in that category
In 2006, both Jennifer Hudson and Meryl Streep should have switched categories because both of them were nominated in the wrong category.
And Forest Whitaker for the Last King of Scotland. I'm happy he won, but James McAvoy's Character was the lead. Forest's character was a central figure but by no means the lead as the story is told through James' character's point of view.
@@davy209I agree. Jennifer Hudson was the lead in Dreamgirls and Cate Blanchett was lead in Notes on a Scandal
I’m surprised i didn’t hear you talk about Lakeith Stanfield being supporting in Judas and the Black Messiah. That was the craziest nomination i’ve seen since I started following the oscars
Perhaps it was excluded because LaKeith Stanfield actually campaigned as lead and was placed in supporting by the Academy itself. 🤔 yeah, that one was very weird. I'm hoping this year something like that happens to Lilly Gladstone. 🤭
Yeah, that makes zero sense. Even though he's a polarizing character, he is the main character and the entire movie is his POV. I'd be curious to ask them who they consider the lead of that movie, Martin Sheen??😂😂
even worse that the only character that could possibly be considered the lead over him, won the best supporting award
I would say both he and Daniel Kaluuya were leads in that film, and yet they both got Supporting nominations, with Kaluuya winning.
@@grinner76 Yeah, totally ridiculous. Should have both been in the lead category (and, it should be said, deservedly so, as they were both excellent).
A case I have always thought of was Dev Patel in Lion from 2016. Patel plays the main character of the movie, its his story, but Patel is only in the second half. The first half is about the main character as a child. So I understand why Patel is in supporting actor due to limited screen time but it still isn't really a supporting role. Patel takes over as lead in Lion.
oh that's interesting! reminds me of his breakout role in slumdog millionaire, where he's in parts of the beginning of the film (the gameshow scenes) but since most of the movie is flashbacks of his childhood/teen years his role primarily picks up in the final third of the movie. he got a BAFTA best actor nomination for that, so there would be precedence for saying his role in lion is a lead performance.
Yeah that’s the first one I remember being weirded out by. His face is on the poster, he’s playing the main character. They did it to guarantee that he’d get nominated but I could have seen him in lead, taking the spot of Viggo Mortensen in Captain Fantastic
It’s an interesting topic when discussing duel roles, when 2 actors play the same character. I think about when both Olivia Colman and Jesse Buckley were both nominated for playing the same character in The Lost Daughter.
I love that movie. That is all
Ironically Geoffrey Rush won as a lead despite only appear in the 2nd half on the Shine. The first half his character as a youngster was played by another actor
Val Kilmer was robbed for his role in Tombstone. He played the best Doc Holiday ever seen on the big screen
Totally
Absolutely
what about wynonna earp? the tv show
He's amazing and should have got a nom. The list of nominations that year is impressive though
He is absolutely our huckleberry
For me, the one nomination that hurts the most was Mahershala Ali's for "Green Book." He was definitely the co-lead of the film and his win in supporting actor cancelled out easily the best supporting performance of the year, and one of my all time favorites: Richard E. Grant in "Can You Ever Forgive Me?," a performance so good that I will always think in my heart he was the true winner of the Oscar that year.
I don't agree, I thought Ali deserved it that year for Green Book based on the fact that he had more screen time with the character than he had in his other Oscar win for Moonlight.
Category fraud indeed!
@@BFA100I'm confused by your statement. He deserved best supporting actor, because he had more screentime than his best supporting actor win for moonlight? I don't follow that logic at all
@@BFA100 That's a weird analogy. His performance in Moonlight was a true supporting performance. His performance in Green Book was a lead performance. Richard E. Grant's performance was a perfect supporting performance and far more deserving of the Oscar. I would have given it to Grant over Ali anyway. I thought it was a better performance.
I was not a huge fan of Moonlight as most people were, so I guess that's what I actually meant@@stephengrigg5988
Clearly, both DiCaprio and Pitt have leading roles.
They both did a great job!
I believe Viola Davis was basically to sure up the win. The Academy is very unpredictable. I do think her Role in The Help was more Supporting than Fences.
So true!
She had 46 minutes of screentime she’s a lead, and in Fences she had 53 minutes of screentime and she won a Tony in lead. Viola would’ve won 2 Oscars in lead in my opinion
Viola Davis was screwed in her previous performance and the oscars dont give Black women lead actress oscars. So if you wanna talk fraud
I always thought Emma Stone as the lead in the Help more than Viola
I always thought her supporting nom for Fences was super sus.
I think Viola knew that they wanted Emma to win her category. She couldn’t take her chances so she positioned herself to get whatever trophy she could. They weren’t going to make Emma wait 20 years to win like they did Viola. Unfortunate.
Brendan Gleeson is someone that should’ve been nominated in lead actor for the banshees of Inisherin rather then supporting actor
I can understand why Viola decided to campaign for supporting. The Academy still has a ways to go in terms of inclusion. The Best Lead Actress Oscar is almost exclusively white outside of Halle Berry(biracial) and Michelle Yeoh.
💯👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾……..After Halle 20 yrs later and We still have NO BEST ACTRESS FROM A BLACK PERFORMER!!!…OSCARS ARE RIGGED!!!!…. And Yes I COMPLETELY AGREE VIOLA’s Performance Was TOTALLY A BEST ACTRESS LEAD!!!!
Angela Bassett should have won a long time before Halle
Exactly, Black women don’t do well in Best Actress and I think Viola Davis and her team took that into consideration, especially given the she herself lost Best Actress to Meryl Streep a few years before
@@anusthing and I love Holly Hunter in The Piano but that Oscar 100% should have went to Angela Bassett!!! I would even argue Whoopi Goldberg should have won over Geraldine Page !!
Whoopi and Angela should’ve been Best Actress winners. Viola should’ve won lead for The Help
My dad was not happy that Haley Joel Osment was nominated in the "supporting" category, instead of "lead" for The Sixth Sense. I tried explaining to him that not only was Bruce Willis a well-established star with top billing, but the film begins and ends with his character rather than Osment's. My dad was not having it, he strongly believed that Osment was playing A main character, at least, although not THE main character.
Similar to Jennifer Connelly, Frances McDormand appears kind of late in Fargo...and yet, she WON in the "lead" category. Of course, McDormand got top billing in Fargo. She didn't play second fiddle to anyone like Brando, Russell Crowe or Tom Cruise.
In your opinion, have there been any performances in ensemble casts ( such as The Big Chill or Contagion, where there is no one specific main character) that deserved to be nominated in Oscar's "lead" category?
i kind of agree with your dad. bruce willis is definitely the lead in that film but i think there is a strong argument to be made that haley joel osment is co-lead. the film is primarily about him. he has a significant amount of screen time without bruce willis. at the very least the scene with his mom in the car near the end is a lead actor moment for me.
I think though in ensembles Jack Lemmon in Glengarry Glen Ross, Matt Damon in Syriana, Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction would make sense to be nominated for lead actor.
@@suarezguy I certainly would have given Sam Jackson a leading nomination, as he seemed to be the most prominent character in his section of the film. It was Travolta who got a lead nomination while Jackson was nominated for supporting. Such are the politics of the movie business.
@@CineRam Travolta, Jackson and Willis all have a claim to be the closest to a main character in the film and yet I think Jackson was both most the main character and also did the best acting among them.
@@suarezguy Jackson certainly gave the most compelling performance of the the three. Since the movie is told in chapters, and each of those three men essentially headlined their own chapter, they could've all been considered for a leading nomination. I believe that since he had the most screen-time and he received first billing in the credits, John Travolta was the default choice for a lead nomination. But my choice would have been Jackson as well.
I absolutely agree with all of these, however I remember at the time I didn’t care which category Timothy Hutton was nominated in, I just wanted him to win for Ordinary People … I was a teenager and his performance there left me breathless !!!
To be fair, he became the youngest recipient for the Supporting Actor award, so I guess he lucked out in the end
Timothy Hutton's performance was extraordinary and an Oscar was well deserved-I completely agree that it should have been a Best Actor award. I still think Mary Tyler Moore should have won Best Actress for Ordinary People. She was so well known for her role in her show on TV and that character is the complete opposite of Beth. Yet, her performance was brilliant-subtle looks, subtle inflections and we begin to see who that character is. She transforms the person we all believed her to be, because of her iconic role in the MTM show and becomes this deeply troubled soul-just pure acting. The fact is, everyone in that film performed excellently.
@@pommie5093agree with you, except that I think Mary Taylor Moore should had been nominated and won as best supporting actress. At the end, it's Conrad's story rather than Beth's story.
@@giovannyespinoza6013 Good point, you're right-she should have been nominated as supporting actress. Exactly, it is Conrad's story and he should have been nominated as Best Actor.
Oh yeah, he was lead but they put him in the supporting category. Total travesty. He should have won as lead.
Great video, dude. This is a hot button issue for me. People will say “it’s not about screen time”….but it is. As you said in your final example, it’s not fair to put up true supporting performances against performances with 40+ minutes. It just isn’t! Having performances much longer than 30 minutes defeats the entire purpose of recognizing supporting performances in the first place. Your Carol example is important, but even there, you float the possibility of Blanchet being in supporting. She has over an hour of screen time. That would be vastly unfair to the other supporting nominees. Both women in that film should be in lead. The same can be said for Notes on a Scandal. I know people are going to come back to “it’s not about screentime…” but I won’t budge on this. It’s a hill I’m willing to die on.
Eh, for me it’s more about they’re effect and the story and the rest of the characters. Ie, who are they supporting exactly? Take Pitt for example, in my opinion they’re both main characters and give leading performances. It’s not necessarily about they’re screen-time, merely about how the film frames them.
@@samuelbarber6177 I take your point but screen time has to be an important consideration. Otherwise, let’s just do away with the supporting categories
Absolute loved Blanchett in Notes on a scandal. She got the supporting nod there because Judi Denxh was the bigger star at the time.
It isn't about anything. The difference between actor and supporting actor isn't in the rules and it completely depends on which category you get enough votes to get the nomination.
@@Paulxl Yep. And that's the problem. The studios control it instead of the actual academy, who just rubber stamp the studio's recommendation.
🤔 I see your point about Connelly, but I have to disagree. Her character's entire arc in that story is rooted on being Crowe's link to reality, and therefore his support.
If the movie focused more on her personal life outside of her relationship with Crowe, I would agree with you, but as the screenplay is written she is there entirely to showcase how John's illness impacted his later life as a father and husband. Connelly's character is reacting to his behavior for almost her entire time on screen. She is in a good chunk of the movie, but like Ledger in the Dark Knight, sometimes supporting performances require much more screentime in order to best support the lead character in driving the story.
So in my eyes, Connelly was a perfect example of a Supporting Actress.
Agree completely. She is just a supporting actress with lots of screentime.
I don’t know, I think Jennifer Connelly’s role in A Beautiful Mind was very similar of that of Reese Witherspoon in Walk The Line. Both had a significant amount of screen time to be considered a lead but they are not the main focus of the film but are both supporting their male leads. But Reese ended up winning and lead and vice versa with Jennifer.
@@davy209 It's been a while since I've seen Walk the Line so I may be misremembering some things, but even though the movie started about Johnny's youth I seem to remember the main focus of the film being about his relationship and marriage with June Carter. How they kind of had a double act going for a while on stage, and how she kind of had other relationships going on. I remember the heart of the film being about their chemistry and relationship.
In A Beautiful Mind the marriage John and Alicia had was instrumental as she probably saved his life, but the focus on the film was much more about John's internal struggle with mental illness.
I'd probably have to go back and rewatch Walk the Line to be sure, but I remember it really felt more like a love story than A Beautiful Mind was.
You’re definitely right, Walk The Line is, at its center core, a love story between Johnny and June, so I totally get why Reese was nominated in the lead actress category, despite having half the amount of screen time as Joaquin Phoenix. Jennifer Connelly’s role in A Beautiful Mind also felt just as important to the story as Reese was in Walk the Line. But both role’s definitely blurred the lines between being a lead and supporting and valid points can be made for both cases. Both Jennifer and Reese could have been in either lead or supporting and it would’ve made sense!
Exactly, I agree. I see her role as similar to Ke Huy Quan's supporting role opposite Michelle Yeoh in EEAAO. He had a LOT of screentime and is the only substantial male character in the show. But his arc is all relating to Evelyn. So he's a supporting actor. An amazing one. Same for Jennifer.
I always thought Talia Shire should have been in the Supporting category for "Rocky" (1976). She would've won then
Yea. Stallone is the main character in Rocky
Gotta side with Pacino - his character in The Godfather was certainly not in a supporting role.
LaKeith Stanfield in Best Supporting Actor for Judas and the Black Messiah.
Seriously WTF?
I swear, that’s only because he got second billing and was the smaller name, but he was absolutely the lead of that film, no question.
@@samuelbarber6177 On par with Alicia Vikander in Best Supporting Actress for The Danish Girl.
You could’ve easily swapped Jennifer Lawrence from Joy with Vikander and no one would’ve cared.
Same with swapping Gary Oldman from Mank with either Stanfield or Delroy Lindo in Da 5 Bloods.
Agree! Delroy worked his arse off in that movie and it was fantastic!@@DieHardAlien
At least he campaigned for lead unlike most of these other offenders.
@@marquescausey7750and that's probably the reason why LaKeith was excluded from this list.
2002 is interesting too! I think you can easily argue that Nicole Kidman's 'Virginia Woolf' in "The Hours" was a supporting role due to screen time (she was also 3rd billed). At the same time, you can argue the Catherine Zeta-Jones 'Velma Kelly' was a lead in "Chicago". Both Roxie and Velma have always been nominated in "Lead Actress" at the Tony Awards. In this case, I think it was setting her up for a win...and wisely so!
However, I think Zeta-Jones actually had more screen time than Kidman did!
I think both Catherine and Kidman should have been supporting.
@@craigmmcgill I wonder who would have won in that race?
It’s crazy how Nicole was the lead in The Hours, especially considering her costar Julianne Moore was nominated in supporting despite having a bit more screen time than Nicole!
I think The Hours has 3 leads
@@craigmmcgillCatherine was nominated and won in supporting. Nicole Kidman definitely should’ve been in supporting too
Fun fact about the viola in supporting conversation, Denzel did an interview somewhere and made a comment on how he thought she should’ve been competing in the lead category. And I mean she did win the lead actress tony for the same role.
But they've only given ONE black woman an Oscar for lead, Haley Berry, and she is half white. Black women know they can't win so why go through all that nonsense?
It’s crazy that Viola Davis and Denzel Washington have played these roles on Broadway and each won lead actor Tonys
What a fun video! Brian, can you please, please, please do a video on 1973 Supporting Actor, How Joel Grey won? This was an extraordinary win because it was never certain. Some people think Al Pacino protesting gave this to Grey, but Cabaret won 8 Oscars that year, and The Godfather won 3. Grey’s performance is a true supporting role, and the movie itself rivaled The Godfather for a win. I think it would be great to hear your take on this, as I haven’t seen many videos covering it at length. 😎😎😎
Make your own videos and do it justice.
Watch the video on the Oscars that year from a channel called "All Talking Pictures."
Reminds me of taking a test on The Great Gatsby in high school when another student thought Nick Carraway was the main character because the story was from his point of view.
I KNEW number 1 would be Tatum O'Neal!
Yep, anyone else just wouldn't make sense.
I agree about Ali in Green Book, Viola in Fences, Jaime in Collateral, Tatum in Paper Moon = actually I agree with all! You may need to do an extended version of this - Top 25 Category Fraud !!
Agree!!!!
Donald Sutherland and the Elusive Oscar Nomination
He so deserved a nomination for Ordinary People.
Yes, everyone in ordinary people was physically the ideal but Sutherland was not and reaction was that he gave a great subtle realistic performance but physically hard to look at in close- ups that Redford insisted on attempting to get audience to become involved in the interior life of the character. Sutherland is not ugly but his odd mannerisms and tics are great for the story( obviously the pretty wife is there because he’s a provider but nowhere near her level showing Beth Jarret was living in her safe environment controlling him , giving in to his needs in beginning sequence when they go to bed . She obliges letting us know she fulfilled her role as dutiful wife. He wasn’t nominated because it was not easy for audience to Want to see him in a close up. That was something Redford the director could’ve skirted allowing the father and son relationship more apparent that the father was blind to his wife’s control and lack of true love . Sotherland should’ve been nominated .
This may sound silly, but I just LOVE when you refer to a performance as a “turn”. I don’t know why, I just think it’s delightful haha! ❤
Julia Roberts in 'August: Osage County' bugs me the most.
Not just because Barbara is a lead and not just because the story revolves around that character, and not Violet, but mainly because it took the oxygen out of the room to get the real Supporting Actresse in the movie - Esteemed Character Actress Margo Martindale a nomination! Somethings she's never got!
I’m glad you think Viola Davis would have won in lead for Fences because unfortunately, it’s still rare that black actresses are even nominated in the lead category. However, I’m doubtful that La La Land would have only won Director that year.
She had a strong chance but I too doubt it because Emma Stone was the "it" girl which proves to be very attractive in the female categories. Viola did have narrative and the role on her side, though. Such a tough call. 🤔
Yeah, Stone was going to win anyways. Don’t see Viola winning at all if she campaigned for Lead that year.
Yeah Viola made the right decision and decided to go for EGOT rather than take the chance at Best Actress and be disappointed
The odds are that she would’ve lost against Emma Stone, who was at the peak of her career, was in the most nominated movie of the year, and is also white
@@jesusynfante5249 She wasn't even nominated for Woman King. Crazy.
Only ONE black woman has ever won for lead and she is half white. Black women only get nominated for roles in which they are maids or down-trotten. They would NEVER get a best actress nod for something like LaLa Land, My Cousin Vinny, Mighty Aphrodite, Pretty Woman. Nope. Hollywood only recognizes beaten or sexually objective black women. Maids, hookers, victims of abuse. THAT IS ALL.
One that really annoys me, is Christoph Waltz in Django Unchained. He was the co-lead with Jamie Foxx. The reason it annoys me so much is because Samuel L Jackson gave one of the best supporting performances I’ve ever seen in any movie. I was sure he would get a supporting actor nomination and should win. It had never even crossed my mind that Christoph Waltz would be nominated in that category. But he was, and Jackson didn’t get nominated. And by the way, another annoying example was from the same year. Philip Seymour Hoffman. Co-lead with Joaquin Phoenix in The Master but was nominated in supporting.
Blanchett and Mara were lead
Brad was supporting. I think Connelly could be either but the focus wasn’t on her. Possibly the same can be said about Davis
Hutton and O’Neal were leads
Agree in the case of Pitt's role, as he's supporting a central character the film largely revolves around. Definitely could argue a gray area's involved in cases like these, but there are a lot of movies with one central character, and everyone else really supports that character.
@@slc2466agreed
You missed 3 big ones, Ethan Hawke was in every scene of Training Day and yet was nominated for supporting actor, he had more scenes than Denzel Washington who won for best actor, Geena Davis was the female lead in The Accidental Tourist not supporting and Jessica Lange was the female lead in Tootsie but won because she lost to best actress in Frances to Meryl Streep for Sophie's Choice, he costar in Tootsie, Teri Garr, was a true supporting actress and should have won that year.
Hawke had only slightly more scenes than Washington and the movie was about both characters but still probably at least slightly more about Washington's.
Training Day was Denzel Washington's movie, come on. Ethan Hawke was great in it but the story, performance, and screen presence made it abundantly clear who the lead was and it wasn't Hawke.
You would think the Hawke pick for Supporting Actor would be more controversial if he had won and yet George Clooney *did* win Best Supporting Actor for Syriana and most people didn't care, were not bothered by it.
With the way that the biggest Oscars (Lead actor/actress and Director) seem as often to be recognition for a distinguished career as one particular movie, there seems to be a concern that it not go to someone who is brand new and their great performance might be a one-off or a fluke somehow. So the supporting often becomes “best acting by a new face” and it’s where the child/teen actors and debuts land, regardless of screen time.
I normally don't enjoy list shows or care about awards shows but I really enjoyed this video. It was really well researched and well argued, even though I haven't seen any of these movies or have much of an idea of Oscars politics, the foundation was really well laid to where I could understand your opinions about them. 👍
River Phoenix in Running on Empty. Very similar situation to the ones you described. The movie was LITERALLY. ABOUT. HIM! But because he was only 17 and no one (understandably) wanted to go up against Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, he was totally misplaced in supporting.
Phoenix was 18 years old that year when his film came out.
@BFA100 Correct. Filming was August-October of '87. Movie was released in '88, and the nomination came out in early '89. He was 16-17 when he gave his performance. That's what I meant.
I Completely disagree. The movie was about his family, and how choices can effect your loved ones. Much like in Ordinary people, River Phoenix and Timothy Hutton were our lens to see the story of their families and their choices/dysfunction. In both cases these were young teenagers who were relatively new to acting holding their own and then some with great experienced performers. It would have been a travesty if RP hadn't been awarded for that performance.
Phoenix was not new by then, he already started appearing in films three years earlier with Explorers and he did not win the Oscar for Running on Empty so then you think it's a travesty.@@timpo717
I saw The Silence Of The Lambs on a double bill at the cinema in 1992. Anthony Hopkins is a supporting role. You are 1001% right about Timothy Hutton.
Hopkins is a co-lead.
Excellent video, Brian. I agree with each of the top 10 choices.
Some honorable mentions:
David Nivens - Separate Tables (won for Lead Actor for 23 minutes of screentime)
Patricia Neal - Hud (won lead with only 22 minutes of screentime)
Patty Duke - The Miracle Worker (supporting performance win that should have been in lead)
Louise Fletcher - One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (won for Lead Actress with only 22 minutes of screentime)
Nicole Kidman - The Hours (with 30 minutes of screentime, less than Julianne Moore's 33 minutes though I'm aware Moore was rightfully nominated for lead in Far From Heaven that year)
David Niven
Hi there. Lead has nothing to do with screen time. It has to do with the weight of the character on the story. The Hours had three leads : Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore. Julianne was nominated as Supporting because she was already a strong favorite for Best Lead with Far From Heaven. If anything was fraudulent, it was Julianne's nomination as a Supporting Role for The Hours, since she was a Lead.
I would add Haley Joel Osment in "The Sixth Sense". Or at least, my dad would! He was not happy that Osment was named in the "supporting" category.
@@adilelnhaily1960 disagree 💯
@@craigmmcgill how come?
An explanation of how the Academy decides what is a lead and what is a supporting role would have been nice.
It's entirely at their whim. Witness both LaKeith Stanfield and Daniel Kaluuya being nommed in Supporting Actor when they are the title characters in Judas and the Black Messiah.
Great topic and video! I'm thrilled that you included Timothy Hutton here. He's the central player, and the film is (literally) about him, but they threw him in the supporting category? Please... but I guess it paid off for Hutton. My personal bugaboo on the topic came in 1950, when Anne Baxter campaigned for the lead category, which led to a predictable voter split and prevented Bette Davis (!!!) from claiming her 3rd (and most deserved) Oscar. Ironically, Baxter's insistence on being a "lead" reflected perfectly the personality of the character she played in the film... and probably reveals A LOT about her personally, as well. As anyone might have predicted, BOTH Baxter AND Davis went home empty-handed that evening. I've hated Baxter my entire adult life for that stunt. Sorry... not sorry.
Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls being considered supporting when her and Beyonce were co leads always made me annoyed but also I’m glad she won so
With regards to Fences, Mary Alice in the original Broadway production was nominated and won for featured actress instead of lead, which is probably why Viola decided to run for supporting in the Oscars, because in the Academy history only Halle Berry has won for lead being an African American woman
And they didn't even nominate Viola for Woman King which is ridiculous.
This year we've got Ryan Gosling in Barbie as supporting actor. Ridiculous. Other category shifts:
Dev Patel - Lion
Pacino - The Irishman
Stone - The Favourite
Michelle Williams - The Fabelmans and Manchester by the Sea
Waltz - Django Unchained
Blanchett - Notes on a Scandal
Streep - Devil Wears Prada
Gosling is co-lead with Margot Robbie imo. It’s pretty much a similar situation with Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Ryan Gosling is nominated for best actor not supported actor
Michelle Williams had a very small role in Manchester by the Sea. She absolutely should have been in supporting.
@@DoncoEntAgain That is true. I watched it recently again and I was surprised because I remembered she had a bigger role. Still, it was a very transcendent role.
If Hailee Steinfeld had gone to the Lead category then Mila Kunis would've made it into the Supporting Actress nominees at the Oscars 😢
I did not like the Hallie Steinfeild nomination in the supporting category for a new main reasons:
1. Back in 2008, the Academy made a huge stink about Kate Winslet campaigning in the supporting category for The Reader and they’d pushed it into the leading category, but chose not to do the same thing with Hallie’s role in True Grit, a couple of years later. If the Academy weren’t going to remain consistent throughout, then why bother even doing it in the first place?
2. Hallie’s performance in True Grit was, without a doubt, a lead (she’s the main protagonist!) and it felt like cheating because it took the fifth spot away from other great performances that are actual supporting roles, like Mila Kunis in Black Swan.
3. The Academy needs to stop nominating leading performances in supporting categories just because the actors are kids. It’s just insulting to insinuate that a kid is not the lead in their film, because of their age. Thank God they didn’t do that to Quavanzene’ Wallis in “Beast of The Southern Wild”!
More likely Julianne Moore would have been nominated there.
@@davy209 Hailee Steinfeld*
@@nickyoude2694 for what? Single Man?
@@nickyoude2694 idk about that
Mila got every nomination except the Oscar one
Nicole Kidman in The Hours had least amount of screen time that her two costars yet was out as lead and won. Julianne Moore with more screen time was supporting, but was lead nominated for Far From Heaven and I think should have won for that. Nicole was ok, but not Oscar worthy especially as lead.
I thought Julianne Moore should have been nominated for "The Hours" instead of Kidman. Maybe if we put an ugly nose on her Moore.
Thought both Kidman and Moore were great in the film, and both in lead roles, too bad they weren't just both nominated for lead but understandable the studio wouldn't want to have them competing in same category. Though they were really both leads I guess I can see that Virginia Woolf was slightly more central overall.
Another person who should be mentioned is Christoph Walz the second time. Granted nobody was beating Daniel Day Lewis for actor. But he’s really the heart of Django Unchained. Plus as far as screen time goes he’s right up with both Tatum O’Neal and Mahershala Ali in Green Book. If you look up the reported screen time of every acting nominee. There are mere seconds separating the 3 longest supporting actor/actress winners. Tatum O’Neal 1:06:58. Mahershala Ali (2) 1:06:32. Christoph Walz (2) 1:06:17.
I thought Leonardo di Caprio and Samuel L. Jackson were better in that movie than Waltz, but they weren’t even nominated.
With Tatum O’Neal there was an actual Oscar rule that caused the category mishap. Back then kids were always in the supporting category no matter the role. I think you forgot an important one… Catherine Zeta-Jones in Chicago. Now I absolutely ❤ that performance and the actress in general but Velma Kelly is a lead. There is zero room for debate. The leads are Velma and Roxie Hart. The supporting females are Mama Morton( Queen Latifah) and Mary Sunshine (Christine Baranski ), which a larger role in the stage version. Amos Hart ( John C Reilly) is also supporting. If any role is on the border it’s Richard Gere as Billy Flynn.
Yes Velma is really co-lead but understandable a studio prefers to not have two nominees competing amongst themselves in same category.
Yeah you can believe all you want that Viola Davis would have won Best Actress but history has proven this was a wise call. Despite the Best Picture loss, the Academy loved La La Land and I do think Emma Stone would have won over Viola even though Viola had the better performance. Tatum O’ Neal in Best Supporting for that film is crazy but again I am not sure that they would have given her that Oscar if she was in Best Actress and that would have been worse.
I do think that one of the main reasons why Viola decided to campaign in the supporting category, instead of lead, because she did not want to compete against Emma Stone, who she’s close friends with, and why compete against a friend when there’s another option to where both of them can win? I honestly don’t like category fraud and the Oscars need to establish clear rules in these categories. Viola should’ve won for in lead, while Naomie Harris should have won for supporting in “Moonlight”, in my opinion.
Brian, thank you for another compelling and accurate video. I agree with all of your choices. Keep up the excellent work!
Accurate? How the hell is accurated to talk about "category fraud" if those categories aren't define in the rules?
The saddest thing about this is that the performers who deserved to be in that category are robbed of their nominations and/or wins, especially those who have never been nominated yet at all.
I totally agree about Tatum O’Neal’s incredible performance in Paper Moon. I came across that movie on accident and was astounded that movie existed and I’d never heard of it.
I’m also glad he mentioned kids not being allowed to be nominated for lead. With only a few notable exceptions. The first being Keisha Castle Hughes in 2004 at 13 for Whale Rider. The second being of course Quvenzhane Wallis in 2013 for Beasts Of The Southern Wild when she was 9 years 5 months or so. The other most notable exception being Jackie Cooper. He was nominated at 9 years 2 months for Skippy. But it was the only category he could be nominated in. The supporting categories were introduced in 1937 ceremony. Plus the intermittent juvenile Oscar was introduced in 1935.
Another awesome list!
Honorable mention: Daniel Kaluuya (Judas and the Black Messiah). It's even in the title.
On another topic: We need a reverse category fraud video. Cases where the actor is arguably supporting but goes lead and gets the Oscar nomination. A few examples come to mind:
1. Anthony Hopkins (The Silence of the Lambs)
2. Olivia Colman (The Favourite)
3. Michelle Williams (The Fablemans)
4. Nicole Kidman (The Hours)
5. Patricia Neal (Hud)
6. David Niven (Separate Tables)
7. Lilly Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon 🤭)
I agree, both Kaluuya and Stanfield were nominated for "supporting actor." So who was the lead? The white FBI agent???
I'm pretty sure Lily Gladstone is gonna win Best Actress now that she's committing category fraud. Especially since it would be historic for an Indigenous actor to win and the Academy loves that.
All three women in the favorite are leads, which is rare, but I think the movie balances the stories of the three very well.
But speaking of short performances, one of my favorites in that area would be Geraldine Page, who received a best actress nomination for a role of 20min or less for Interiors (1978)
other nominees: Annette Bening (American Beauty, Spacey's obviously the lead), Meryl Streep (The Devil Wears Prada, Anne Hathaway's the lead, although you can argue Meryl's the title character), Talia Shire (Rocky, obviously Stallone is the lead), Denzel Washington for Training Day (Ethan Hawke is the lead), Leo for Blood Diamond (Djimon Hounsou is the lead)
Brian!! This is an AWESOME topic, I'll be watching after work but just wanted to say I LOVE your channel and I LOVE the ideas you come up with! Keep doing your thing my friend!!!
Just came here to say I will always stick by that Viola is supporting in Fences, her character isnt developed enough as Troy and Jennifer Connelly was definitely supporting in A Beautiful Mind
Same for Louise Flecher in Cuckoo's Nest. She was in the movie for only 22 minutes and won Best Actres.
If I remember correctly, the Seventies were a tough time for female leads. They had a tough time filling slots some years. Also, Ann-Margaret was nominated in lead for a supporting role.
We need a video of reverse category fraud (supporting roles that land a lead nomination)
Ann-Margret is the female lead in "Tommy" as Nora Walker, with a lot screen time and her character running through the entire movie.
@@jonathanvelazquezph.d.2719 Like Anthony Hopkins, most critics agreed that Louise Fletcher deserved Best Actrees forr her short screen time. Two of the best, most evil in cinema history.
@@slc2466 in 1972, Ann was nominated for best supporting in Carnal Knowledge. In 1962, she won the Grammy for Best New Artist. What a force of nature.
Ann is only three years older than Roger Daultry.
I always thought James Stewart was more of a supporting actor in The Philadelphia story, with Cary Grant, the lead.
The Top 10 ones that Brian Rowe left out which I would consider category fraud: *Winner
*Walter Matthau (The Fortune Cookie)
* Peter Ustinov (Topkapi)
Ethan Hawke (Training Day)
*George Burns (The Sunshine Boys)
* Christian Bale (The Fighter)
Robert Preston (Victor/Victoria)
LaKeith Stanfield (Judas and the Black Messiah)
*Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls)
*Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained)
River Phoenix (Running on Empty)
Jennifer literally had less screentime than Beyonce
I thought Christian Bale in The Fighter, though a major role and presence, was still very much supporting role, much more supporting than lead or co-lead.
Hawke is much more co-lead but I can also see the view that the movie was at least a little more about Alonzo than Jake.
I think at least one of the biggest was George Clooney as supporting for Syriana and he won for it but that doesn't get much complaints.
Jennifer Hudson for supporting Actress in Dreamgirls, that is a LEADING roll. Then that season they forced a for your consideration for Beyoncè in lead actress in the 2007 award season
It’s crazy that Beyoncé was considered the “lead” in Dream Girks when she had lesser screen time than Jennifer Hudson. Obviously, Beyoncé was campaigned as the “lead” only because of her name recognition and star power.
My choice is Geena Davis in The Accidental Tourist. It's an OK performance - I think she is miscast since the character is supposed to be homely and irritating. Neither of which she is in the film. But there is no way that it is a supporting performance. She is in the film far more than second billed Kathleen Turner and is the film's leading lady. It also kills me that her lead performance prevented a true supporting performance from Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl.
I agree. And I think Michelle Pfeiffer should’ve won for dangerous liaisons
Ethan Hawke in Best Supporting Actor for Training Day
That's a good one
He was really co-lead but I also think there's a lot to the view that the movie is at least a bit more about Alonzo than Jake so Washington/Alonzo was even more the lead and Hawke/Jake supporting.
The biggest Oscar fraud happened in 1994, when Tommy Lee Jones stole Ralph Fiennes' fucking Oscar. I mean... Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List: becomes one of the most memorable villains. TLJ in The Fugitive: just acts like TLJ, cool and commanding. And you give the Oscar to the latter? Really?
"I did not kill my wife!"
"I don't care!"
Great moment, great character, character growth and evolution even though Fiennes was also great.
The 'lead performance' should be based on the protagonist. Whose story are we watching? In True Grit, it is Matty Ross' story, and Rooster and LeBeouf are Steinfeld parts of it. Matty is the one driving the story forward, so she should get nominated for Best Actress.
Jennifer Connelly was supporting in A Beautiful Mind. She has plenty of screen time, but it is John Nash's story. Take her out, and you still have a story. Take out Crowe's role, and the story disappears. So Jennifer was fair to be nominated for Best Supporting.
I did not like the Hallie Steinfeild nomination in the supporting category for a new main reasons:
1. Back in 2008, the Academy made a huge stink about Kate Winslet campaigning in the supporting category for The Reader and they’d pushed it into the leading category, but chose not to do the same thing with Hallie’s role in True Grit, a couple of years later. If the Academy weren’t going to remain consistent throughout, then why bother even doing it in the first place?
2. Hallie’s performance in True Grit was, without a doubt, a lead (she’s the main protagonist!) and it felt like cheating because it took the fifth spot away from other great performances that are actual supporting roles, like Mila Kunis in Black Swan.
3. The Academy needs to stop nominating leading performances in supporting categories just because the actors are kids. It’s just insulting to insinuate that a kid is not the lead in their film, because of their age. Thank God they didn’t do that to Quavanzene’ Wallis in “Beast of The Southern Wild”!
@@davy209you’ve copy pasted this in response to multiple comments, come on. At least tweak your comment and pretend like it’s responding to the person you’re talking to
I honestly thought Brad Pitts performance was absolutely supporting.
I agree it’s supporting. Brad’s in about a third of the film. I don’t think it’s category fraud.
I disagree but it’s a tough one. I don’t feel like his character was actually supporting anyone else, both him and DiCaprio seemed to get a pretty equal share of the run and plot.
@samuelbarber6177 I truly felt like Dicaprio was Lead and Pitt was supporting.
Just because they're alongside each other doesn't mean they're both leads
@@stevenstevenson5303 yes, but I don’t feel like Pitt was supporting DiCaprio’s story. It just felt like they each had different stories and were both the film’s leads. The same way a film like Network or Pulp Fiction has several leading roles
@samuelbarber6177 I see you're point, and yeah that makes sense. Idk I guess I'm just not as harsh with Pitts oscar for Once Upon a Time cause it was my favorite movie that year and it was great to see Brad Pitt win the oscar. Leading or Supporting it was a great role.
Totally agreed with Collateral and especially The Godfather. The Godfather is literally the story of Michael Corleone and his rise. Brando was the lead in the first 1/3rd of the movie but then moved behind in the second 1/3rd and is barely even there in the last 1/3rd
I think Olivia Colmans nomination in Lead for The Favourite is an honorable mention.
Still pissed off about her win over Glenn Close.
Unfortunately Viola Davis’s winning for best actress in Fences, while deserved, probably wasn’t going to happen and she knew it. To this day not one mono-racial black actress has ever won best lead actress at the oscars. Not once in 95 years.
I think she would defeat Emma Stone if she goes lead. Her performance in Fences surpassed every other acting performers
Halle berry won best lead actress in 2001
the category fraud that I despise is Mary Badham for To Kill a Mockingbird. Like, Scout is the one who narrates the story and TKAM is from Scout's perspective! I was legitimately shocked to see that she was nominated for supporting
Being the perspective character doesn't, shouldn't necessarily mean you're actually the focus, Atticus Finch became the focus for a lot of the film.
@@suarezguy Agreed. Just because we see the movie and people in it through the lens of a particular character doesn't make them the lead actor or actress. Also, there seems to be a lot of discrediting of young people in movies being in a supporting role. Whether they are in the movie or have a lot of screen time, a child actress is never going to be a lead in a movie with Gregory Peck. This is the same reason I think Timothy Hutton was not category fraud. He was a young actor with limited experience in a movie with hollywood heavyweights Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore. He too was our lens for that story and had a ton of screen time, but the main character in Ordinary People was the family as a whole, not any one character. All just my humble opinion.
Looking back at it, if Joan Crawford had swallowed her pride and campaigned in supporting, she would of had a much better chance at an Oscar nomination since they didn’t care all that much about category fraud and have nominated co-leads in both lead and supporting (just like in The Miracle Worker).
I 100% agree. Complete category fraud. Also, Gregory Peck was category fraud too. She has more screen time than Peck. If Peck was nominated and won for supporting, maybe Peter O’Toole would’ve for his timeless performance in Lawrence of Arabia.
Stupid category fraud. Mary Badham is lead and Peck is supporting.
I agree with the number 1 choice, but I always feel you omit the Academy has course corrected this and has nominated child actresses for lead: Keisha Castle Hughes and Quvenzhané Wallis come to mind
Loved you mentioning Hopkins' work at the outset. I agree in his case and with Patricia Neal in "Hud" they are, respectively, the male and female leads of their movies supporting a central character with more screen time, but they make such a strong impression their wins are still warranted, and all the more impressive given their limited time onscreen.
I have no idea where people get the Hopkins notion from. Third best performance of the character. Totally decent performance in a good thriller, but doesn't even come close to the mythological status there was a media blitz to create for it. Was clearly deliberately set up at the time to self-declare as legendary and some people just eat it up. It's a supporting performance, and probably one not worthy of any Oscar.
@@fromomelastocarcosa3575 Curious about this "deliberately set up" notion, as "Lambs" was released in February of 1991, not during the late-year awards season, which would better fit the idea of a "set up" to win awards. If Hopkins really gave such an average performance, it doesn't make sense his work would be remembered by voters months later, when so many other Oscar contenders were being released. You can downplay his performance, but the majority of voters deemed his work powerful enough to earn the Best Actor Oscar, even with limited screen time.
@@fromomelastocarcosa3575 It's a violent thriller, some people would even say horror, movie and he is in it for 18 minutes nominated as a lead in a great year for film, the deck could not possibly have been more stacked against that win. And you're going to sit here with a straight face trying to suggest it's artificial? One of the most iconic performances in film history, remains incredibly popular decades later, and you're like 'there was a media blitz that made the sheeple like it'. I can say only: lol.
If media blitzes worked like that, you'd think those PR people would do them more often.
I have beeen screaming about Viola being BEST ACTRESS for years
I am obsessed with your channel
For me, the 2017 Oscars had three blatant examples of category fraud. Viola Davis isn't just the female lead in Fences, she's THE lead, period. I agree that she would have had a good chance of winning best actress that year and for me the whole thing is made worse by the fact that Ruth Negga got nominated for best actress that year for what was much more of a supporting role in Loving. Even though she played the biggest female character in that movie and is featured throughout most of it, her character doesn't do very much and it feels much more like Joel Edgerton's movie.
That was also the year when Dev Patel got nominated for best supporting actor in Lion, even though he was the clear lead of that film. But since best actor was kinda stacked that year, the studio decided to launch a campaign for him in the supporting category, using the logic that the little kid who played the child version of the same character in the first half of the film was the lead.
However, the most egregious example of category fraud that I can remember in recent years was Judas and the Black Messiah, where Daniel Kaluuya and LaKieth Stanfield were co-leads (they shared top billing and every poster I've seen for the film features the two of them and nobody else) and they both got nominated for best supporting actor.
It's not "category fraud" when there's no criteria in the rules regarding those categories. It's pretty much up to the people voting in the nomination process.
Credibility lost immediately when you refuse to call out Hopkins
Huh
They need to consult screenwriters to understand what a "protagonist" is. Lol.
To compound Davis's category fraud, she had already won a Tony Award as LEAD actress in the same role on stage in Fences.
Yes! I think it came down to acknowledging the past issues with Oscar votes - a Black woman winning lead actress was so rare, supporting was the "safer" bet.
Michelle Williams should've won supporting and Viola Davis lead.
@@nashjillian4450 Only ONE black woman has ever won lead actress, Halle Barry and she is half white. That Viola wasn't even nominated for Woman King tells you how big of a problem the Oscars have with black women.
I do think that one of the main reasons why Viola decided to campaign in supporting, instead of lead, was because she did not want to compete against her Emma Stone, who she’s close friends with, and why compete against a friend when there’s another option to where both of them can win? I honestly don’t like category fraud and the Oscars need to establish clear rules in these categories. Viola should’ve won as a lead and Naomie Harris should’ve won in supporting.
@@davy209 I forgot about that Naomie Harris nomination. The supporting actress category was stacked that year even without Viola Davis.
I'm surprised you didn't use the most recent example. Stephanie Hsu in EEAAO is in no way a supporting performance. It's a mother-daughter story, and she's the second female lead. However, I guess the logic was to focus on Michelle Yeoh for lead and avoid any potential vote splitting.
I never felt Hsu was lead. A better argument would be that Ke Huy Quan was co-lead.
@@johnnolan5579True, that one makes more sense
@@johnnolan5579I'm sorry, but I completely disagree. You could completely remove Waymond from the story and lose none of its message. You cannot say the same about Joy/Jobu. Without that character, there is no movie. She's the second female lead.
@@professionalspinner9292 Let's agree to disagree because Yeoh's relationship with her husband is extraordinarily important in the film. While the mother's relationship to her daughter is a focal point, much of the story focuses on how her life would be different in the multiverse including relationships with a woman and, especially her husband.
@@professionalspinner9292if you remove Waymond from the story you would get a different ending. It's from Waymond that she learns to be kind, that being nice is a way to deal with things, she ended helping the people who were figthing against her because of him, she learns that love is the way because of Waymond and his unconditional love and kindness.
I’d be interested in a follow up video focused on a similar idea of category fraud, but it’s looking at Golden Globe nominations where Dramas or Musicals/Comedies are miscategorized
LOL. There probably is a lot of perception, fairly gained, that it's easier to win for Comedy than for Drama category, Drama category usually has a lot more and stronger competition.
I remember watching "Awakenings" and was shocked to find out that Robert De Niro was nominated for Lead Role, instead of Supporting Role, If I remember correctly. Also, how did Robin Williams not get nominated for Lead
Think they were both leads in it.
I think people don't feel comfortable saying performances nominated as leading should've been nominated as supporting if the performance is iconic and brilliant. Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs and Marlon Brando in The Godfather are clearly supporting.
Thank You, Brian, for bringing always great quality content 😊
I still don’t understand why Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz were both nominated for best supporting actress and Olivia Coleman was nominated (and won) for best Actress for The Favourite. Stone and Weisz should have been nominated for best actress and Coleman should have been nominated for best supporting actress. The roles of the former were much larger than that of the latter.
Yeah I think Emma Stone was technically the lead of that movie, the story starts and ends with her. Olivia and Rachel could’ve been supporting
I remember hearing they switched the categories with Emma and Rachel with Olivia
@@bryanalstoncoxingI agree
1000% agree. Doesn't matter how much time if you're the lead, as the ones with short times usually have such an impact over the entire movie. I don't think you should be in more than 35% of the movie to be a supporting character. I think it deprives people who will never be a lead in a film from winning an Oscar. I would say Patty Duke also could be here, she was a co-lead and on the screen almost as much as Anne Bancroft.
Totally agree with you!
Says the amount of time spent in a film shouldn't impact the award.
Proceeds to use the amount of time spent in the film as evidence for why they should have won a certain award.
Great Video as always
Can you please make a video for Rooney Mara and her elusive Oscar?
I can think of a few people who could've replaced Holly in 93's supporting line up Miriam Margolyes The Age of Innocence,Julianne Moore or Andie MacDowell in Short Cuts,Embeth Davidtz in Schindler's List or Kerry Walker in The Piano.
A couple of others that immediately come to mind: Patty Duke should have been nominated for Best Actress in The Miracle Worker; Simone Signoret should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actress in Room at the Top (even though both won in the actual categories).
The same year Patty Duke won for The Miracle Worker, Mary Badham in To Kill a Mockingbird was nominated in the supporting category too and she had more screentime than Gregory Peck from that same movie who won Best Actor.
If Simone Signoret was nominated for supporting instead of lead, I wonder if Marilyn Monroe would’ve been nominated for Some Like it Hot.
I was fully expecting to hear about Catherine Zeta-Jones in Chicago in supporting. She's a co-lead for sure.
She’s definitely co-lead. She has as much screentime as Renee Zellweger imo.
Whoa whoa whoa! Brian !!!!!!
It’s not just Viola Davis’ decision to went for Best Supporting Actress that year, it was Paramount Picture who made that called !
Don’t blame her, blame the studio, bro !!!!!!!!!
You make a great point. Hopkins as Lecter is the best (or at least top tier) performance of all time, so yeah you can't begrudge the win in that category at all.
One that I always thought was weird was both Lakeith Stanfield and Daniel Kaluuya both nominated for Judas and the Black Messiah. Seriously, isn't Lakeith Stanfield the lead? How can there be 2 supporting actors and no lead?
At least LaKeith Stanfield actually campaigned as lead. It was the Academy's decision to place him in supporting. Which is probably why it didn't make this list.
The lead was actually the white FBI agent...Ha ha ha no.
You could also make a case for Patty Duke for the Miracle Worker Since The movie was about Helen Keller, and she played Helen Keller
Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep in August: Osage county… Julia’s character was actually a lead role
Totally agree!
Yep. She and Meryl are coleads
Yeah, what happened there? My best guess is Julia and Meryl were fighting to both get nominated in lead and Julia decided “Whatever, I’ll just go supporting”
Realizing Thelma and Louise is 30 years ago. *cries in old*
Viola Davis in supporting blocked a win for Naomie Harris whom I think would have changed the narrative and won for her outstanding and heartbreaking work
Harris had to play the same character against three different actors - and she only had one day of filming with each of them!
Fantastic topic for a video, and another wholly entertaining and thought-provoking video, bravo!
I really believe Meryl Streep should have campaigned for Best Supporting Actress for "The Devil Wears Prada" and in this case she would definitely have beaten Jennifer Hudson
I don't know. Just like in the case of Anthony Hopkins in the Silence of the Lambs, her character is very crucial to the movie. Sure, the movie focused on Andy, but you could argue that without Miranda, the story won't move forward and Andy wouldn't have gone through the major character development that she had. Her presence is felt all throughout the movie. Hers is definitely a lead performance for me. Emily Blunt, on the other hand, is a true supporting performance
Idk about that Jennifer Hudson & Eddie Murphy both made dream girls imo
Honestly, both of them should’ve switched. Jennifer Hudson should’ve been in lead actress and Meryl Streep should’ve been in supporting.
@@ROCKBETHENAMEagreed, Hudson and Murphy were the best parts of
@@davy209Cate Blanchett should switched to Best Actress
Timothy Hutton - Ordinary People
Daniel Day-Lewis - Gangs of New York
I think Daniel Day-Lewis as Bill the Butcher was appropriate in lead actor category, he was only technically not the main character or, as much or more so, he actually was one of the two main characters.
@@suarezguyhe should’ve been in supporting
Lily Gladstone is doing it this year for Killers of The Flower Moon. Don't get me wrong her performance is great but it feels more of a Supporting Actress role than lead.
That’s what I been saying, she would’ve won the Oscar in supporting, they did the same thing with Michelle Williams in the Fabelmans
If Michelle Williams was nominated in supporting instead of lead, maybe either Viola Davis or Danielle Deadwyler would’ve been nominated.
@@laurajones1773 yea but they shouldn’t have nominated Ana De Armas for Blonde people didn’t like it at ll
Ryan Gosling would be category fraud too for this year. He’s being campaigned in supporting instead of lead. He’s pretty much co-lead with Margot Robbie. Similar to Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Brenden Gleeson in The Banshees of Inisherin.
I always thought Louise Fletcher was a supporting character in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. She was arguably the main actress in the movie, but she doesn't have that much screen time. I think that was one of those years when the best actress category was wide open. I think they actually had trouble coming up with five nominees.
I don't see why an actor playing a supporting character can't be nominated for a Leading Actor Category since she was the lead in a Female Role. I think the Oscars blur the line which distinguishes a character and an actor. If Jack Nicholson was a female playing a female character, then Louise Fletcher would have been a Supporting Actress.