Countdown to the Oscars: Best Supporting Actor

We’re counting down the days until the Academy Awards! We’ll be here, breaking down each of the 23 categories, talking a bit of history, and trying to figure out who is going to win all those gold statues. So check back throughout the next three weeks for Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars.

Best Supporting Actor

The nominees are:

Brendan Gleeson in The Banshees of Inisherin

Brian Tyree Henry in Causeway

Judd Hirsch in The Fabelmans

Barry Keoghan in The Banshees of Inisherin

Ke Huy Quan in Everything Everywhere All at Once

The acting categories are truly exciting this year. It is rare that we have this much drama in four of the biggest awards of the night. I love it. Last year, I broke down the previous 15 years of winners across all four acting categories. Across 60 winners, there were at most eight that could even be considered surprising, and the real number is probably closer to three or four.

Last year was about as bland as they come with Jessica Chastain, Will Smith, Ariana DeBose, and Troy Kotsur sweeping their way to the Academy Awards stage with virtually no (pre-show) drama. I am not saying they were not deserving winners, particularly DeBose and Kotsur, but I am saying they were predictable. And, that’s not a healthy place to be for the future of this awards show.

This year, on the other hand, there’s drama all down the line. Actress is a toss-up between two worthy performers. Supporting Actress is a free-for-all. Actor is a fight to the finish between the up-and-comer and a comeback story for the ages. And, while Supporting Actor seems the most locked of any of them, there is one little stat that stands in the way of predicting a clean sweep for the frontrunner. Exciting stuff. Let’s get to it.

Ke Huy Quan in Everything Everywhere All at Once – As much as I might prefer other performances in this category, it’s hard not to be happy for Quan. It’s the comeback of a lifetime. Even Brendan Fraser has been working steadily overseas and on television. Quan was all but out of the game. Before making Finding ‘Ohana in 2021, he had not acted in a feature film since 2002. It’s a cliché, but the put-upon husband/universe-hopping secret agent Waymond Wang is the role of a lifetime, and Quan did not miss his chance to leave a mark.

Though the script often leaves the actors high and dry, Quan makes the most out of what he’s given. Whether in the In the Mood for Love-style romantic drama pastiche or the Matrix-style fight sequences, Quan rises above the mess around him and pulls real emotion out of a character that’s pretty one-note on paper. Quan has already filmed the next Russo Brothers movie – a sci-fi action adventure movie, if you can believe it – and I’m sure he’s great in it. But, here’s hoping all this attention nets him some opportunities to dig into some real characters.

Barry Keoghan in The Banshees of Inisherin – Keoghan has been unforgettable in every movie he has appeared in. Whether in scene-stealing bit parts like The Green Knight or weightier supporting roles like Dunkirk, he brings an unmistakable blend of intensity and vulnerability to every role he plays. Though he had been around for a few years, I first noticed him in Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer as an implacable villain hellbent on revenge. I called it the best supporting performance of 2017. He outdoes himself in The Banshees of Inisherin.

We have seen the village idiot character in plenty of movies before but never portrayed with this much pain and pathos. Keoghan plays Dominic as a man bound by circumstance, good-hearted in a cruel world, not wholly innocent but moral in his way. There is a gentleness to everything Keoghan does in the role, a touch so light you wonder if you felt it – that is until the tears start falling. It is a beautiful piece of acting, and I look forward to many more years of Keoghan’s work.

Brendan Gleeson in The Banshees of Inisherin – If we’re being honest, Gleeson is really more of a co-lead with Colin Farrell in this picture, but Farrell is the movie star, and Gleeson is the character actor, so it was always going to go this way. Regardless, Gleeson is perfect in The Banshees of Inisherin as a musician who just wants to use the time he has left composing songs and thinking about the weightier aspects of life.

Gleeson is an actor’s actor, great in everything he does, but he has been at his best working with Martin McDonagh and McDonagh’s brother, John Michael McDonagh. Between the two filmmakers, Gleeson has appeared in four features and an Oscar-winning short, and they comprise the best work of the performer’s long career. Maybe it’s because they’re countrymen, or because Gleeson just understands the rhythms of their writing, but whatever it is, it’s magic.

Brian Tyree Henry in Causeway – Because of the vagaries of moviemaking and the way release dates can shift around, sometimes an actor who has been working a while will seem to burst on the scene and be everywhere. I think a lot about 2011, when Jessica Chastain had Take Shelter, The Tree of Life, and The Help all come out within a few months of each other. Henry experienced that to the nth degree in 2018, when he had seven movies in which he appeared come out in theaters. His brilliance in Widows and If Beale Street Could Talk could not be denied, and it has all led up to this.

Causeway is a strange little film. It was sold to audiences as something of a comeback for Jennifer Lawrenece, but Henry steals every scene they’re in together. He doesn’t get a ton to do in the film – honestly, neither of them does – but he does what he can as a mechanic who befriends Lawrence’s wounded war veteran. It is an understated performance, but if the movie works at all for you, it is because Henry grounds the events in an emotional reality that brings you into the characters’ world.

Judd Hirsch in The Fabelmans – Hirsch has already made Oscars history with this nomination, breaking none other than Henry Fonda’s record for the longest gap between Academy Award nominations. Fonda went 41 years between his nods for The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and On Golden Pond (1981). Hirsch’s previous nomination came for Ordinary People in 1980, 42 years ago. Hirsch is also now the second-oldest acting nominee ever at 87 years old. He is three months younger than Christopher Plummer was when he was nominated for Supporting Actor in 2018 for All the Money in the World.

With this nomination, Hirsch adds his name to the list of one-scene wonders to strike it big with the Academy, joining the likes of Ned Beatty in Network and William Hurt in A History of Violence. Hirsch is only in The Fabelmans for a few minutes, but as Great Uncle Boris, he delivers the central theme of the movie to little Sammy Fabelman and makes plain the conflict that will haunt Sammy (and Steven Spielberg) for the rest of his life. Art or family? Family or art? It’s quick and to the point, and Hirsh holds nothing back.

The final analysis

I have talked a lot over the years about the BAFTAs as the best predictor for the acting categories at the Academy Awards. I have never felt less sure about that than this year, and that uncertainty holds across all four acting categories. So, bear with me as I feel this out.

Quan has won basically everything of importance, except the BAFTA. He has given humble, heartwarming speeches every time he has been given the opportunity. He is somebody for whom his fellow actors root. Everything Everywhere All at Once appears to be a merciless frontrunner for Best Picture, gobbling up every other award it is within striking distance of. I see no good reason why Quan won’t win this in a walk.

That said, Keoghan did win the BAFTA. Over the past 10 years, the BAFTAs have matched the Oscars in Supporting Actor eight out of 10 times. The two that didn’t: Barkhad Abdi won the BAFTA for Captain Phillips in 2013, while Oscar winner Jared Leto wasn’t even nominated by the Brits for Dallas Buyers Club; then, in 2016, Dev Patel won the BAFTA for Lion, while Mahershala Ali went on to win his first award for his work in the Best Picture-winning Moonlight.

In the past five years, they have matched every time. But, this year feels much more like 2016, doesn’t it? Patel is a beloved British star who did career-best work in Lion, much like the Irish Keoghan delivering his best work in a movie the Brits liked quite a bit more than they liked Everything Everywhere All at Once. Meanwhile, Ali was the heart and soul of the movie that went on to win the top prize, much like Quan is for this year’s Best Picture frontrunner. Never mind that Keoghan actually delivers the best performance of the group. The winner will be Quan.

Will win: Ke Huy Quan in Everything Everywhere All at Once

Should win: Barry Keoghan in The Banshees of Inisherin

Should have been here: Nicolas Hoult in The Menu

A note about my favorite snub: As the amateur foodie who gets taken down a peg, Nicolas Hoult is pitch perfect in The Menu. He is exactly the right kind of infuriating, making you root for his downfall throughout the whole film. Then, when it comes, Hoult turns it around and actually makes you feel bad for the fate that will befall him.

Next time: Supporting Actress