Should Kim Basinger have won an Academy Award?

No. There were better performances that year.

I was extremely underwhelmed by her performance. Beautiful woman, though.

One reason people seem to win is that they act better than is ever expected of them. This is why she won for the movie

She’s half Swedish, half American Indian

She is not Swedish and American Indian, she is Southern wasp, the usual scots Irish, German etc. her last name is German.

I'm quite certain my mother telling me Kim was a member of our tribe.

It’s confusing exactly why her background is. Basinger has stated herself that she’s have Cherokee. And Arnold S introduced her at the Academy Awards are being half Swedish, Half Native American.

The link below describes it all

Dot or Feather?

Basinger was born in Athens, Georgia, on December 8, 1953. Her mother, Ann Lee (née Cordell; 1925–2017), was a model, actress and swimmer who appeared in several Esther Williams films.n Her father, Donald Wade Basinger (1923–2016), was a big band musician and loan manager; as a U.S. Army soldier, he landed in Normandy on D-Day. Basinger's ancestry includes English, German, Swedish, and Ulster Scots.

They describe her as having some of those things, not half and half. Every clown in America says they’re Cherokee, especially that they have “a full blooded Cherokee princess grandma”. It’s a cliche. Kim Basinger is not a tribal member. She’s a white girl from Georgia. She does have an interesting face but believe it or not, some German and English people have interesting faces with nice cheekbones. It’s been known to happen.

People forget how the Academy Awards are parsed

Everyone knew Titanic was going to win Best Picture and Director

LA Confidential had no other acting no other acting nominations but the Academy wanted to give it another major award aside from Screenplay to show how much they appreciated it, so Basinger won.

In retrospect, Boogie Nights has proven to be the far more influential film and should have won for Julianne Moore, but people assumed she’d have lots of nominations in her future so they gave it to Basinger whom they correctly guess had career peaked here.

Stunning woman, good average actress. Didn't deserve the award for that performance and in general as an actress, but she was insanely popular at the time, peaked with LA Confidential and while she wasn't the best of the nominees (Moore and Cusack were evidently better), she was the most spendable as an Oscar winner.

Yes, she did a great job. The Titanic lady was good too.

She didn’t deserve it. Beautiful but wooden performance

Oh, yes, completely deserved. She was part of a major acting ensemble with great individual scenes in a hit movie. That always gets awards.

Did she show her titties?

And she looked nothing like Veronica Lake. Her character was supposed to be a hooker who resembled Veronica…she didn’t. They didn’t even try…

My father married a pure Cherokee

My mother's people were ashamed of me

The Indians said that I was white by law

The White Man always called me "Indian Squaw"!

She did not deserve it. She’s a better actress than she gets credit for, but that doesn’t make her good. People have such low expectations of conventionally attractive women, acting wise.

Who was snubbed for a nommy?

as lovely as she is, her daughter is a beast

Her daughter has a small head but big feet…odd.

R20 Sarah Polley in The Sweet Gereafter

*hereafter

Sig Weaver should have been nominated and win for The Ice Storm

What Kim Basinger should have been nominated for is Door in the Floor in 2004. She was amazing in that role.

Yes if Sigourney had been nominated for The Ice Storm she probably would’ve won.

No. I rank this basic bitch's win right up there with Julia Roberts'!

R23 Great performance and film.

This is my perennial "biggest Oscar injustice" example—that Kim Basinger beat out Julianne Moore that year.

Julianne should have won for Boogie Nights and Far From Heaven.

I thought Moore and Heather Graham both had great roles and gave performances that were too good and too wild for Oscar.

IMO Basinger is more than conventionally attractive. She is drop-dead gorgeous, or was. And she has that child-like vulnerability like Marilyn Monroe. I loved her in that film where she kills Eric Roberts. He was bad boy hot in that film.

I thought she was decent in 8 Mile as Eminem's fucked up trailer park whorish mother.

R34, big deal. She was just playing herself!

No. We’ve speculated on this win on DL a few times over the years. One big reason I think she won, beating out her closest competitors, Moore and Stuart, was the studio that produced Boxing Helena, taking her to the cleaners, and her having to file bankruptcy. She probably got a lot of sympathy votes from other actors in the Academy that could relate to producers and studios behavior.

The best supporting actress of 1997 was Julianne Moore. Seriously.

[quote]Yes if Sigourney had been nominated for The Ice Storm she probably would’ve won.

Sigourney should have won for 'Gorillas in the Mist'.

Sigourney should have had Minnie’s spot. I’d be hard pressed to choose between her and Julianne.

Sigourney should have many more nominations than the 3 she has.

Chrissy Metz as Karen Carpenter

*ack wrong thread

R39 I've posted this before but Minnie's nomination was a total head-scratcher, she did nothing of note in that role

Did Matt Damon or Weinstein grease some palms for Minnie Driver to get an Oscar nod? Did she fuck Weinstein?

[quote] Minnie's nomination was a total head-scratcher

What part of “Miramax knew how to work the system” confuses you?

Minnie was fine. She had that scene where she said she didn't care about money and missed her father. I believed it... Basinger on the other hand is one of the driest nominees and winners. I don't remember a single thing special about her performance.

There's no Cherokee in Georgia. After genocide, the Eastern US states kicked most of the surviving tribes out and that happened in the early 1800s. It's called the Trail of Tears. So if said white Southerner had any Native blood it be way too tiny to count for anything. Now African blood is another story and racist white Southerners rather not talk about it. I swear every White American claims they are part Cherokee ignoring there are hundreds of different tribes out there. Overall, it's disrespectful to a people that were nearly made extinct.

She does look Germanic. Many Germans and Scandinavians have her look. She doesn't look Native American at all. If you want to see modern actresses with actual partial Indigenous looks, you have Jennifer Lopez, Jessica Alba and Eva Longoria. Native Americans are brown skinned with jet black hair and very wide faces and look East Asian. Most people look at very Eurocentric paintings of Natives and are used to redface actors. Natives of Canada and The US look more like the average Mexican, Central American and to a lesser degree Puerto Rican because they are more or less the same genetics.

I think Kim is rather underrated despite winning an Oscar. She was very funny in both Blind Date and My Stepmother is an Alien. And she proved her dramatic chops in 9 1/2 Weeks and Fool for Love.

R48 true. Almost ALL of her other roles are better than LA Confidential.

She's beautiful but seems sorta autistic to me. Not introverted because breaking down and passing out from socialization isn't an introvert thing. So, either autism or an anxiety disorder. Not that that's a bad thing given she is still successful. Daryl Hannah came out and admitted to being autistic.

[quote]Daryl Hannah came out and admitted to being autistic.

Now it all makes sense.

She was in Cool World with Brad Pitt! That was a crazy 90s cult classic movie. They probably thought it was the next Roger Rabbit.

Looking back, in 1997, Debbi Morgan from Eve's Bayou should have been nominated for her excellent performance. The film got lots of buzz from Roger Ebert but it didn't get any Oscar buzz. Morgan should have at least been nominated.

If it had been released today, Morgan would definitely have been nominated.

NO. She was not even good. She was the weakest link in LA Confidential.

R53 agreed. Would’ve taken Gloria Stuart out of the category in favor of Morgan.

I always thought this one was a pity vote due to the breakup with and harsh treatment by Alec Baldwin.

Oh, fuck off, OP, you thread-proliferating ignoramus and troll.

R56 they were together at the time she won. He was in the audience cheering her on.

R50 She has said she suffers from clinical depression and an anxiety disorder. I think like a lot of very beautiful women, an acting/modeling career is just something that fell into her lap, I’m not sure she was extremely ambitious beyond the marriage to Baldwin and doing whatever he deemed would be good.

Daryl Hannah being autistic makes perfect sense. I think Courtney Love is also autistic (along many other mental disorders).

Wasn't she agoraphobic at some point? That's basically just an extreme anxiety disorder, so I can see why some find her aloof or cold. I don't believe she's autistic. People with severe anxiety disorders can come across that way sometimes, but they still know how to turn on the charm and be a regular member of society when they need to or are around people they're comfortable with. Autistic people have more trouble in this department.

I liked her in The Simpsons, playing herself.

Objectively, Julianne should have won for "Boogie Nights" with Dench winning for "Mrs Brown".

The following year Brenda Blethyn should have won for "Little Voice". Poor Dench was embarrassed to win for a performance she could have given while high on Ket and severely hungover.

The best supporting actress performances from 1997 were by Sarah Polley in The Sweet Hereafter and Kathy Burke in Nil by Mouth, neither of whom was even nominated.

Of the nominees, Julianne Moore was the best one by about a mile. Basinger is my second favorite though.

That's a good theory, R36. Her association with Boxing Helena really did a number on her career anyway. It totally killed Sherylin Fenn's career.

The trial was extremely humiliating for her. Painting her as an impossible cunt.

Kim knew she had lost when the opposing counsel closed his arguments: "How many times did you hear the story about the pretty girl who got everything she always wanted?".

Only on DL would half this thread be about her ethnicity.

She did at least one 700 Club interview that I can recall

so no she gets nothing from the Academy. Next.