Supporting Oscar Winners who should have been lead

Yawn. What a boring idea for a thread.

And Viola didn’t pick her category. The producers did.

JHud for dreamgirls... Effie is the friggin lead as is Velma in Chicgao

From the link:

This ploy doesn’t always work. In 2007, when Kate Winslet decided to campaign for Best Actress for “Revolutionary Road” and Supporting Actress for “The Reader,” the voting groups just put her in the Best Actress category for “The Reader” — and she won the Oscar.

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So voters can revise category submissions? How does that work?

Timothy Hutton owns this thread. He was the lead in Ordinary People and was wonderful, but of course he wouldn’t have stood a chance against Robert DeNiro in Raging Bull.

Jennifer Hudson was not the lead in Dreamgirls. Not at all. Neither was Viola for Fences. She was supporting.

Viola absolutely was co-lead in Fences with Denzel Washington. And it WAS she who determined that she should go supporting to win the Oscar as she thought Emma Stone had Best Actress locked up (a mistaken view, as I believe Stone's victory was a half-hearted selected and that Viola still could've easily triumphed in Lead).

Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood was co-lead with Leonardo DiCaprio; Pitt should've been nominated in Lead, and Leo not at all, as it was one of his weakest performances.

Me. Everyone knows I was the lead in Gone With The Wind.

The role in Fences was originally nominated for supporting at the Tony’s. It was switched to Lead for Viola.

I literally rewatched this film 2 weeks ago while it was on TV. She was supporting

They should’ve created a new category, Best Cameo, for Beatrice Straight and her five-minute single scene from Network.

The award should’ve gone to Piper Laurie for Carrie.

That said, I love Straight’s acceptance speech.

Stallone and Ali get to the nominees around 1:30.

The person who showed a little integrity about this with Rosalind Russell. There was talk that she was a lock to win best supporting actress for her role as Rosemary in “Picnic” (1955). She refused to be considered for supporting actress because she was a star and felt that supporting nominations should go to those actors who were second leads and not just based on the size of the role. This year’s supporting actor category showed how skewed the whole thing has become. Brad Pitt is a star and had his name above the title. Three other nominees won their Oscars as Lead Actors (though De Niro did win Supporting first).

^^was Rosalind Russell.

Brad Pitt’s name was over the title because it’s BRAD PITT. He was Supporting.

Pitt was definitely a co-lead in Hollywood.

He was definitely supporting.

R14, why do you think that? He had several long sequences without Leo. He might have even had more screen time.

He didn’t have more screen time. His characters entire being was supporting Leo’s.

I think Alicia Vikander is in The Danish Girl more than Eddie Redmayne.

The Academy changed the rules to be Supporting years ago, and screen time has nothing to do with it anymore.

They’ve changed it numerous times over the years.

R16, the movie was about the relationship between the two men. Similarly, Viggo and Mahershala were co-leads in Green Book.

What are the new rules?

Glenn will be going supporting for her one woman show in hopes of finally winning.

It shouldnt be about how "supportive" the character is to another character. That is so fucking stupid.

R19 Mahershala was supporting. He wasn’t even in the first 30 minutes.

I had no idea Straight had a transatlantic accent in real life.

Emma Stone was the lead in The Favourite, and Olivia Colman was supporting despite how nominations ended up shaking out.

R25 = Glenn Close

R10 I love Russell, but I suspect her decision was driven by vanity as much as (maybe more than) “integrity.” Rosemary is always a supporting role—a great one (didn’t Hecksrt originate it on Broadway) and it becomes a co-lead, then the central focus of the play—the Madge and Hal love story—gets sidelined). I suspect Russell just wasn’t willing to be viewed as moving into character actress territory—it was her first nomination since “Mourning Becomes Electra” seven years earlier—by 1958 she had the great stage and screen success with “Auntie Mame” (though no one was going to beat Susan Hayward’s Babs Graham that year). If she had been willing to go Supporting for “Picnic,” she might very well have won. It wasn’t a particularly strong year in that category and, while Jo van Fleet was a great actress and did very strong work in “East of Eden,” her screen time was quite limited.

Very interesting.

Tatum O’Neil in ‘Paper Moon’

R9 One thing I think the MPA could do to differentiate themselves from all the other Awards that now exist, is to have 3 acting categories: Lead, Supporting, and Featured.

Lead would contain the top-billed actors, supporting would contain the in-betweens and those in ensemble movies like the Big Chlll and the ones we accuse of category fraud, and featured would have great one or two scene performances like Beatrice Straight in Network, Judi Dench in Shakespeare, etc

There are all kinds of films where, if the two main characters had been a man and a woman, they would both have been considered lead actors, but because they are both men or both women, one of them becomes “supporting.” Brokeback Mountain or Call Me By Your Name for example.

George Burns/The Sunshine Boys

I hate category fraud. Kim Basinger, Catherine Zeta Jones, Alicia Vikander, and Rachel Weisz are examples of lead actresses who would not have won their Oscars if they were put in the right category--Best Actress.

Me. For kramer vs. Kramer.

R33, Kim Basinger was probably the fourth lead in L.A. Confidential, after Pearce, Crowe, and Spacey. She was in the right category.

Weird. Meryl in Kramer? She’s hardly in it. A lot of you other Joe’s are wrong too. Basinger no lead in la confidential.

G at r36. Why are you dragging me in?

r5, Effie is most certainly the lead of Dreamgirls. There's a reason why Jennifer Holliday won all the lead actress awards for the original Broadway production, and why Amber Riley won the lead actress Olivier for the 2017 London production. Curtis may be a co-lead, but it's just as much her story.

Kim Bassinger was in no way, shape or form lead in L.A. Confidential.

One example that bothers me the other way around is Reese's lead win for a supporting performance, but then again who would have won in that extremely weak (the weakest with 1994) year. Felony Huffman? Keira?

I think I read that Vikander is in the movie a bit more than Redmayne. Ridiculous that she was in supporting and someone once told me it was because her character supported him.

R22 agreed. Supporting means it's a smaller role that has less screen time. Not a character trait. Cause there have been people who have won with characters who weren't supportive. Hello Monique.

R17 oops I hadn't seen your comment before I posted

In 1963 Patricia Neal was going to campaign for Hud in supporting but she started winning critics awards in lead and the category was so weak she was able to sail to a win.

In 2002 Jennifer Connelly in a beautiful mind won for best supporting actress, sissy spacek was a best actress nominee the same year had less screen time for in the bedroom then Connelly did for her film.

Julia Roberts for August Osage county was ridiculous to put in for supporting as was Helen hunt for the sessions.

I just pretend Vikander won for Ex Machina, which is a better performance than what she won for and is actually supporting.