Countdown to the Oscars: Best Actress

The Last Cinema Standing Countdown to the Oscars is your guide to the Academy Awards. We will cover each of the categories in depth, talk about history and what the award truly means, and predict some winners. Check back all month as we make our way to the big show, one category (each as important as the next) at a time.

Best Actress

The nominees are:

Jessica Chastain for The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Olivia Colman for The Lost Daughter

Penélope Cruz for Parallel Mothers

Nicole Kidman for Being the Ricardos

Kristen Stewart for Spencer

We saved the best for last, as far as these acting categories are concerned. For once, a truly wide-open race. I have spent almost 4,000 words talking about the acting categories already this year and have mentioned the BAFTAs over and over again. If it wins the BAFTA, it wins the Oscar. Well, we cannot rely on that here. Why? Because not one of the performers nominated for the Academy Award this year was also nominated for the BAFTA.

Going back to 1990 – before that, eligibility deadlines just don’t line up in a way that makes the data useful – this has never happened. Not once. The closest approximation is 2003, when the organizations matched just one nominee – Naomi Watts in 21 Grams. That year, the BAFTA went to Scarlett Johansson for Lost in Translation, while the Academy went with Charlize Theron in Monster (Note: At the BAFTAs, Theron was not eligible until 2004, when she lost to Imelda Staunton for Vera Drake). 

We are not flying blind, per se – Jessica Chastain won the Screen Actors Guild award and the Critics’ Choice – but we are missing our most significant bellwether. As a result, the predictions are all over the map, with support spread out across three or four of these nominees. For our purposes, what this means is one fun race right down to the end. By the way, for those curious, the BAFTA this year went to Joanna Scanlon for her work in the British drama After Love.

Jessica Chastain for The Eyes of Tammy Faye – Tammy Faye Bakker, as portrayed in this film, is an enigma for our times: a completely sincere person. It would seem her love of people is surpassed only by her love of god. Her desire to spread a message of acceptance and understanding (through Christian faith) runs up against the money- and power-hungry men in her life, including her husband. It is a fascinating story in a film that could have been better, but what is not in question is Chastain’s commitment to the role and passion for bringing it to life.

Though she had been around for a while before, Chastain broke onto the scene in a big way in 2011, when five films in which she had a role were released. Most importantly, she starred in the Palme d’Or winning The Tree of Life, the critically acclaimed Take Shelter, and the popular hit The Help, for which she earned her first Oscar nomination. She is a remarkable performer who brings intensity and drive to everything she does, and here, she applies that intensity and drive to a role that requires every ounce of her talents. She proves more than up to the task.

Penélope Cruz for Parallel Mothers – A four-time nominee who previously won Best Supporting Actress for her role in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Cruz has never been better than she is in Pedro Almodóvar’s latest film. She plays Janis, a single pregnant woman who befriends a younger unwed mother-to-be. I will not reveal more than that since the movie’s secrets are among its great pleasures, but suffice it to say, Janis is presented with a moral dilemma no one should ever have to face.

Cruz plays this conflict wonderfully, showing the depths of Janis’ moral questioning with little more than a shift in her tremendously expressive eyes. One thing that has defined some of Cruz’s most memorable characters has been the sense of energy and motion the actress imbues them with, particularly in her previous Oscar-winning role. For Almodóvar, she drops all artifice and affectation, utilizing stillness and silence in ways we are not used to seeing from Cruz. In this silence, however, Cruz is able to speak volumes.

Olivia Colman for The Lost Daughter – Colman delivered one of the most memorable and rewatchable Oscar acceptance speeches in recent times when she won Best Actress for The Favourite in 2018. Among the standout lines from that speech was when she addressed her children watching at home, saying “This is not gonna happen again.” Little did she know. Now, after a Supporting Actress nomination last year and another leading nomination here, it seems almost inevitable that it will happen again, if not this year, then someday.

For my money, her work in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s stunning directorial debut is the best of the nominated bunch. She plays a woman on holiday, haunted by her past and beset by dread of the nefarious characters around her. She is not without sin, and there is never a moment in Colman’s performance that belies that fact. She is wounded but also capable of wounding. While her actions may on the surface seem inexplicable, Colman makes us understand what could drive this woman to do the things she does and hurt the people she hurts.

Kristen Stewart for Spencer – What a wild ride this awards season has been for Stewart, who after getting close on a couple of occasions, now has her first Academy Award nomination. As we talked about with Will Smith in King Richard, sometimes a performer and a part just seem to add up to an Oscar. That was the feeling around Stewart playing Princess Diana when the first trailer for Spencer dropped. Then, she won handfuls of critics awards, and the buzz would not die down. That was until she missed out on a SAG nomination and a BAFTA nomination. After that, it was an open question of whether she would even be Oscar nominated, let alone in line for the win. Now, here we are.

To her credit, Stewart has remained mostly nonchalant about the whole thing, blasé when it seemed she might miss out but humble and grateful when she made the final list. Her work in the film is sometimes uneven, but the longer you watch, the more she forces you to get on her wavelength. This is not the Princess Diana we all knew from the papers and the pictures, but rather a private Diana, dealing with demons and devils all around her. For bringing us into the world of the unseen Diana, Stewart deserves this recognition. 

Nicole Kidman for Being the Ricardos – If you enjoyed Being the Ricardos, I am sorry if it seems like I am down on the film. The truth is I really feel nothing about it one way or the other. The film is not engaging enough to have strong feelings about, which is a fatal flaw of a different kind. It seems Kidman was always going to be nominated for this performance, which has the patina of something like Renée Zellweger’s recent Oscar-winning turn in Judy. Like that performance, this is a serviceable imitation of life, but it never really goes deeper than that.

The biggest problem, though, is that it just isn’t funny, and Kidman does not have the comedy chops to make the material funny. Lucille Ball is famously one of the funniest people in the history of television, so casting a talented dramatic actress in a bland day-in-the-life story does no one any favors, least of all Lucille Ball. Kidman is too cerebral, and to some degree, that is what the movie asks her to be, but it is wrong for the character and frustrating to watch.

The final analysis

I try not to read too many other sites when I am writing my pieces and making my predictions. Just enough to stay informed but not enough to be influenced. I confess, however, that I have read a lot about this Best Actress race, and what I have read has left me more confused than when I started. So, let’s reason this out together.

Who won what? Kidman won the Golden Globe, which was meaningless this year. Colman and Stewart each won a handful of minor critics awards, while Cruz won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association award and the National Society of Film Critics award, two of the biggest around. Then, there is Chastain, who as mentioned, has won the SAG award and the Critics’ Choice. The signal is all over the place.

It would be foolish to discount how helpful making a big, televised speech can be, which tips things in Chastain’s favor. Stewart is probably too young for the Academy to go that direction, and she will have other chances. The only arguments I am seeing for Cruz and Colman – other than the obvious quality of the work – is that they are both well liked by a broad selection of Academy members. But, perhaps the similarity of their narratives works to cancel them both out, which brings us back to Chastain.

With everything I have witnessed this season, I just don’t see a compelling enough argument in any other direction, and some of the buzz around the other performances could really just be boredom with the frontrunners leading to wild second guessing. I will be okay if I get this wrong, but for now, I am sticking with Chastain.

Will win: Jessica Chastain for The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Should win: Olivia Colman for The Lost Daughter

Should have been here: Rachel Sennott for Shiva Baby

Next time: Best Director

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Makeup and Hairstyling

The Last Cinema Standing Countdown to the Oscars is your guide to the Academy Awards. We will cover each of the categories in depth, talk about history, what the award truly means, and predict some winners. Check back all month as we make our way to the big show, one category (each as important as the next) at a time.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

The nominees are:

Coming 2 America

Cruella

Dune

The Eyes of Tammy Faye

House of Gucci

Hey, look at that, a category full of fun, deserving nominees and movies stuffed to the brim with famous people. Exactly the kind of entertainment Oscars watchers tune into the Academy Awards for. So, of course, this is the first category we are talking about that will not be featured on the live broadcast of the show. 

The logic – if one can call it that – is kind of baffling. Of the past 10 pre-pandemic winners in this category (excluding Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a Netflix pandemic release), seven of them grossed more than $100 million. If the goal is to highlight more popular, crowd-pleasing films, this is a category the producers never should have cut. 

Cruella is a Disney film that made $230 million at the box office, while Dune is a $400 million-grossing smash hit. Even House of Gucci made $150 million worldwide. Meanwhile, Coming 2 America is an Amazon Prime release with a big budget and huge movie stars. Only The Eyes of Tammy Faye really falls short here, but you still have Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield delivering buzzy performances.

But viewers will not get the chance to celebrate any of this when they tune into the show. Instead, we will get pre-packaged clips and “fan service” that services no one, least of all fans of what the Academy Awards always purported to be about: great films.

Dune - Much of the work on this film is excellent, down the instantly iconic hairstyling on Oscar Isaac and Timothée Chalamet, but there really is one reason this movie is here: Baron Harkonnen, the “Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now” style villain portrayed by Stellan Skarsgård. The character represents the kind of big, showy prosthetics work the Makeup Branch loves to reward. As deployed in the film, it is effectively repulsive, communicating immediately the gluttony and vanity at the heart of the character.

Makeup artist Donald Mowat is a first-time nominee, but the Swedish hair and makeup team of Love Larson and Eva von Bahr are recent favorites of the Academy with previous nominations for popular Swedish hits A Man Called Ove and The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared. They are masters of prosthetic work, and Dune provides them the biggest stage yet on which to ply their trade. 

The Eyes of Tammy Faye - The makeup is so integral to this biopic of televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker that it actually becomes a small plot point. However, as the movie goes on and the pounds of makeup and prosthetics gather on Jessica Chastain’s face, a ghoulishness develops that I found occasionally hard to watch. To some degree, that is part and parcel of who Tammy Faye was, as portrayed in the film, but at a certain point, the balance tips in the direction of the comically grotesque.

This would not be a problem in a movie with a firmer grasp of its tone, but The Eyes of Tammy Faye often vacillates wildly between satire and earnest admiration of the character. Hairstylist Stephanie Ingram and makeup artists Linda Downs and Justin Raleigh do their level best, and Chastain is certainly transformed in the role, but the foundation of the movie can’t quite support the weight of all that makeup.

House of Gucci - It is hard to believe director Ridley Scott released two big-budget films this year to some amount of acclaim and Oscars buzz, and between them, this is the only nomination garnered. This film in particular is more likely to be remembered for its snubs than its nomination, with Lady Gaga and Jared Leto passed over while Göran Lundström, AnnaCarin Lock, and Frederic Aspiras were recognized for their work in bringing Gaga’s and Leto’s characters to life.

House of Gucci is a strange film, and the makeup artists know this – so, it should be noted, does Leto, who is the only actor who seems to be having any fun on screen. Gaga’s big hair and Leto’s balding head and wrinkled visage would be more at home in an opera or melodrama than in any serious character study, but Scott rides a fine line, embracing the weird and giving his makeup and hair department free reign to create the special work on display here.

Coming 2 America - This is the kind of nomination we come to this category for – the little loved oddity that features genuinely superb makeup work the branch just had to nominate. Critics score be damned, the prosthetics and makeup in every corner of this long-awaited sequel are a sight to behold, just as they were the first time.

It has been 31 years since Rick Baker scored a nomination for Coming to America, in which he transformed Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall into the myriad distinctive characters that peppered their Queens, New York. This time, all those characters are brought back and more, with equal skill by makeup artist Michael Marino and hairstylists Stacey Morris and Carla Farmer. The Academy is unlikely to go this route, though Murphy’s The Nutty Professor previously won this award, but isn’t it fun that something this unusual and outside the box is being celebrated by the Academy on their show? Or, wouldn’t it have been?

Cruella - One of the more fun multiple nominees on the ballot this year, Cruella could very well win an award come the big night, but I would not predict it in this category. The PG-13 punk rock origin story of one of Disney’s darker villains, this movie was intended to be high on style from the jump, and it mostly reaches those heights.

First-time nominees Nadia Stacey and Julia Vernon, along with previous nominee for 1917 Naomi Donne, team to create a series of looks that feel right at home in the high-fashion world of the film. The transformation of Emma Stone’s Estella into the titular Cruella is a feat in its own right, and Donne, who was the personal makeup artist and hair stylist to Emma Thompson, makes The Baroness a canvas on par with the film’s gorgeously stylized costumes.

The final analysis

As with many of the below-the-line categories, it is smart to look to the Best Picture nominee in the group for the potential win, which here means Dune. That would be a smart prediction and a deserving winner. However, things have shifted in recent years, as the Academy moved in 2019 from three Makeup and Hairstyling nominees to five. In the small sample size of the previous two years, the Best Picture nominees in the lineup have failed to snag the award, falling to showier work in slightly less acclaimed films.

In 2019, Joker and 1917 both lost out to the fantastic prosthetic work on display in Bombshell, while just last year, Mank came up short against the sweaty intensity of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. If we are looking for alternatives this year, House of Gucci is certainly a possibility, but my money is on The Eyes of Tammy Faye. 

With Jessica Chastain perhaps slightly in the lead for Best Actress, based on her Screen Actors Guild victory, it would be easy to see this year following the path of 2011, when The Iron Lady pulled the same double act. Meryl Streep won Best Actress for a performance greatly enhanced by the hair and makeup teams, and the makeup crew was rightly recognized for its contribution. Here, the hair and makeup are perhaps even more integral to the central performance, and it seems likely they will be rewarded as such.

Will win: The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Should win: House of Gucci

Should have been here: Old

Next time: Costume Design