Best Supporting Actor

In stark contrast to the Best Actress race, where every awards group is nominating the same five people, the Supporting Actor citations are all over the map. Eddie Murphy gave an electric, soul-singing performance that reminded everyone how wildly talented he is (crappy fat-suit movies and tabloid troubles aside.) As the only actor here to be drafted by the Globes and the Guilds, he stands as the lonely front-runner. After him, no one is guaranteed a nomination. Working backwards, I can first eliminate Michael Sheen from the running. His performance as Prime Minister Tony Blair has its fans, but the role is too subdued for this crowded field. Next I can cross off Adam Beach; he had early support for his haunted role in Flags, but Clint Eastwood’s companion film, Letters From Iwo Jima, eclipsed the earlier film, and with it, Beach’s chances. Another early favorite who has lost steam is Ben Affleck, playing actor George Reeves and earning the first wow-he-can-really-act reviews of his career. The Departed boys present an interesting conundrum; will one, two, or all three of them make it? (It is an extreme rarity for three performers from the same film to compete in the same category.) The critics liked Wahlberg, the Globes went for Nicholson (as always), and the Guild chose DiCaprio. Academy rules forbid a single performance to be nominated in the lead and supporting categories, (rules drafted after Barry Fitzgerald got enough votes for nods in both races for 1944’s Going My Way), so if DiCaprio actually racks up enough points in both categories, they will only count the category he got the most votes in, and the other will simply be thrown out. With all DiCaprio’s vote-splitting, and hopefully common sense dictating that it is not a supporting performance, Jack Nicholson should squeak ahead. (He is the most nominated and the most winning male performer in Academy history, so the infatuation is bound to take him the distance.) Another film that fielded three supporting actor contenders is Little Miss Sunshine, though Alan Arkin has emerged the clear favorite over his onscreen family members Steve Carell and Paul Dano. No respectable person doesn’t like Alan Arkin, so he looks like a safe bet. The last two slots will go to some combination of Jackie Earle Haley, Djimon Hounsou, and Brad Pitt. Haley and Hounsou both picked up critics’ awards, got shafted by the Globes, but came back into contention with the SAG nods. Meanwhile, Pitt earned some of the best reviews of his career and gained momentum with a Globe nod, but didn’t get the vote from his peers. Djimon Hounsou is an increasingly well-liked actor in the business (see his left-field nomination three years ago for In America), and even detractors of Blood Diamond can agree he was the best aspect of the film, so I think that gives him a narrow edge. In a ridiculously close face-off between Haley and Pitt, my gut instinct is that while the full Guild membership embraced critical fave Haley, he, like his Breaking Away co-star Dennis Quaid in Far From Heaven, will miss out to the more Hollywood choice, when the elite Academy members go with Brad Pitt.