Anne Hathaway is the frontrunner. Who are your four other picks?
Last week I provided a rundown for the Best Supporting Actor nominations to be released January 10. Now it’s time to analyze who will fill the Best Supporting Actress category.
After the premier of Les Miserables, Anne Hathaway (The Dark Knight Rises) has taken a strong lead for her role as Fantine. Likewise, there has been a lot of hype for newcomer Samantha Barks as Eponine, Helena Bonham Carter (Dark Shadows) as Madame Thenardier, and Amanda Seyfried (Red Riding Hood) as Cosette. We’ll come back to them later.
The next actresses who will probably receive nominations are Helen Hunt (Cast Away) as a sex surrogate in The Sessions and Sally Field (The Amazing Spiderman) playing Mary Todd Lincoln in Spielberg’s Lincoln.
Although Amy Adams (Trouble with the Curve) still looks like a safe bet for a nomination with her domineering performance in The Master, the early frontrunner has fallen slightly since the beginning of the awards season,
At this point, these four actresses look to be very snuggly in the race. The fifth slot is much less certain. In addition to the other Les Miserables actresses, prospective nominees include Maggie Smith (Harry Potter) as an ornery old lady in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Kelly Reilly (Sherlock Holmes) as a recovering drug addict in Flight, and Jacki Weaver (Animal Kingdom) as a concerned wife in Silver Linings Playbook.
We’ll disqualify Jacki Weaver and Helena Bonham Carter due to their relatively small and less-nuanced roles. Although Kelly Reilly and Amanda Seyfried have sizable screen time, neither has shown a great deal of talent in the past, which will hurt their chances.
We are left, then, with Maggie Smith and Samantha Barks. Working against Smith are two Oscar wins and four other nominations she has already received in the past. The fact that Smith has already had her successes at the Academy Awards, combined with the enormous hype for Les Miserables, should give Barks the nomination.
NOTE: At the time of writing, Ann Dowd had yet to win the National Board of Review (NBR) Award for best supporting actress in Compliance. Many analysts now believe she is a contender for the Oscars. However, the obscure nature of Compliance, combined with the NBR historically being a poor indicator of future Oscar scenarios (it is common for winners to not even get an Academy nomination), leads me to keep my predictions as they are for the time being.
And the nominees are:
Anne Hathaway as Fantine (Les Miserables)
Helen Hunt as Cheryl (The Sessions)
Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln (Lincoln)
Amy Adams as Peggy Dodd (The Master)
Samantha Barks as Eponine (Les Miserables).
By: Alex Allen | Contributing Writer
