A GUIDE TO HOLLYWOOD’S BIGGEST RACES
SEPTEMBER 24, 2021
The Fresh but Familiar Faces of Oscar Season
And that’s a wrap on Emmy season! The winners of Sunday’s show (mostly from Ted Lasso, The Crown, and Mare of Easttown) have placed their brand-new statuettes on their shelves at home, and we can finally close the book on the Emmys. Which means it’s really, really Oscar season now!
I’m Rebecca Ford, and this week I’ve been busy seeing early screenings of most of the films that are vying to be contenders in this year’s race. I can’t say much about them just yet, but one of the exciting things about these early days is the momentum that starts to build behind certain films. Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast, for example, won the audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 18, giving it a nice boost as a contender.
What’s also beginning to surface are some early names for the acting races. And what we might see is a handful of well-known names who have not been part of the Oscar race before. My Awards Insider colleague David Canfield recently sat down with one of them: Ann Dowd, who spoke about her role in Mass, in which she plays Linda, a mother who meets with the parents of a young man her son killed. “The thing that really, really stunned me about this experience was how much [Linda] took possession of me, rather than me of her,” said Dowd, who, at 65, is a veteran of the big and small screens (and an Emmy winner!) but has never been nominated for an Oscar.
And Dowd isn’t the only actor who could land a first Oscar nomination this year despite a long career of outstanding work. Peter Dinklage, who has a record four supporting-actor Emmys for his work on Game of Thrones, will likely be a part of the lead-actor conversation for starring in Joe Wright’s musical, Cyrano. Kristen Stewart could also land her first nom for her transformative performance as Princess Diana in Spencer. In supporting roles, Kirsten Dunst is earning plenty of buzz for her work in Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, while Gaby Hoffmann also plays a woman dealing with the challenges of motherhood and family in Mike Mills’s black-and-white C’mon C’mon.
So sure, we’ll see some very familiar Oscar veterans’ names circulating this year (from Benedict Cumberbatch to Jessica Chastain to Leonardo DiCaprio). But I’m especially excited for those actors who’ve been dishing out stellar work for years and may finally get their day in the sun. Be sure to keep an eye on Awards Insider for more on the most interesting performances arriving in the coming months. I’m off to another screening!
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