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BEST SUPPORTING ACTORS
by JOHN HARKNESS
Jim Broadbent, Iris
The hardest-working man at this year's Oscars - husband of Judi Dench's Iris Murdoch, father of Renée Zellweger's Bridget Jones and manager/pimp of Nicole Kidman's Satine in Moulin Rouge - Jim Broadbent is so overdue for a nomination, it's ridiculous. That he didn't get nominated for his great, gruff inhabitation of W.S. Gilbert in Topsy-Turvy is almost as scandalous as his absence from the 1991 nomination list for Life Is Sweet or the 1995 list for Bullets Over Broadway. Broadbent's work in Iris is exquisite - it generally is - but this year he's up against Ian McKellen's wizardry and Ben Kingsley's killer instincts.
Ethan Hawke, Training Day
In the vein of pigs flying and snowballs in hell, Ethan Hawke's nomination is the year's biggest surprise, but a second look shows that he's awfully good as the young cop assigned to Denzel Washington's king cobra narcotics cop in Training Day. It's a fascinating portrait of a young man in way over his head, trying to ward off the world's angriest bull with a very small and flimsy cape. It's all in his body language and deference. Hawke's often an annoying actor. I can never understand what, say, Winona Ryder sees in him in Reality Bites, or why he wears that stupid hat through most of Hamlet. Here, though, he holds his own with the best actor in American movies operating at the very top of his game. That's got to be worth something.
Ben Kingsley, Sexy Beast
This is Kingsley's fourth nomination, but only his first for a fictional character, a psychotic hard case who arrives on the Costa Brava to make life hell for Ray Winstone's retired gangster being summoned out for one more job. The actors branch of the Academy loves change-of-pace performances (Susan Sarandon as a nun! Holly Hunter as a mute! Denzel Washington as an extremely bent cop!), and what's a bigger change of pace than Gandhi as a Cockney spiv? It's a blow-'em-out-of-the-water, picture-dominating turn, the most overtly impressive performance of the lot, and the Academy rarely shies away from the obvious. Still, Kingsley's up against...
Ian McKellen, The Lord Of The Rings
Let's not forget that the Academy has a memory, and occasionally honours a performance that shouldn't win in lieu of one that should have. Does the Academy remember that Roberto Benigni won best actor over Ian McKellen's extraordinary performance in Gods And Monsters? Yes, it does, and thus Ian McKellen winning in this category would be less an endorsement of The Lord Of The Rings than a righting one of those "what the hell were we thinking?" decisions. McKellen is superb as Gandalf in TLOTR - otherworldly but solid, mystically vague yet terribly concrete, a big enough presence to overcome his hat.
Jon Voight, Ali
At dinner after the Ali screening, someone asked, "Wasn't Jon Voight fantastic?" and I thought for a moment and asked, "Jon Voight was in Ali?" It's a prosthetic performance, and plainly so - you can see the hours he spent in makeup every day - but it's an interesting act of impersonation on Voigt's part, and he really has Howard Cosell's voice and posture to a T. But Ali has almost no momentum, and Voight already has an Oscar.
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