The five nominees for Best Actor were all winners. Kevin Costner wasn’t expected to get the Oscar for Dances with Wolves in acting, but he was the favorite to win Picture and Director (especially after Golden Globe and Guild wins). Richard Harris was up for a movie no one had seen but which he had done ample publicity for: the nomination was the win. Awakenings’ Robert De Niro had already been named Best Actor by the New York Film Critics Circle (also citing his supporting performance in GoodFellas) and by the National Board of Review, where he had tied with co-star Robin Williams. Gerard Depardieu won the Cannes Best Actor prize for Cyrano de Bergerac and the Golden Globe for Best Actor - Musical/Comedy for Green Card.
And Jeremy Irons won the actual Oscar:
The nominees, ranked in order of my preference:
5. Kevin Costner as Lt. John Dunbar, later Dances with Wolves
Dances with Wolves
only acting nomination; BAFTA Award nominee for Best Actor, Golden Glove nominee for Best Actor - Drama
Costner gives a solid movie star performance, the kind that used to win Oscars for Charlton Heston or Gary Cooper. I don't think there was any choice, any line reading, any moment of voiceover that "surprised" me but, nor did I doubt what I was watching. I believed his emotional journey with the Lakota, I believed in his love for Stands with a Fist, I believed in Lt. Dunbar. You never forget you're watching Kevin Costner, sure, but the opposite was never the intention. He is the conduit through which this epic about the end of the frontier and its people is delivered, and he does a pretty good job of it.
4. Gérard Depardieu as Cyrando de Bergerac
Cyrano de Bergerac
only nomination; BAFTA Award nominee for Best Actor [1991]
He's so good in both this and Green Card, I don't envy having to make the decision. Depardieu's approach to depicting Cyrano's pomposity is amusing: he tosses off his poetry rapidly, with a calculated casualness that implies he's not even trying, he's as talented in his sleep as he is awake - though his reaction to a yawn, an eyeroll, a slight, seem to imply that he tries and cares very deeply, genius though he may be. My one issue was that I never believed this Cyrano felt himself too ugly for Roxane, nose or no. Depardieu is such a confident force that it seems impossible.
3. Robert De Niro as Leonard Lowe
Awakenings
past two-time winner, fifth of eight acting nominations; National Board of Review's Best Actor of 1990, NYFCC Awards winner for Best Actor
Speaking of performances I believed, despite knowing that it's the star! It might be the "baitiest" Oscar performance I've ever heard of: he's brought back from catatonia! He learns about the beauty of the world! He tragically regresses! It's a full physical and vocal curve that he has to play. I never doubted it because De Niro never forgets that he is playing a man who hasn't been "awake" since he was a boy. There are juvenile glints in his eye and you can see him straining to contain himself - the first time he's had to do so in decades. De Niro transforms not with makeup but through knowing and showing this man.
2. Richard Harris as Bull McCabe
The Field
second and final nomination; Golden Globe nominee for Best Actor - Drama
I'm not the biggest fan of the film but the performance is a monumental one. It is when Harris speaks of the land and all that was sacrificed for it - his mother, his father, himself, generation after generation living in destitution but devoting themselves to this small parcel they don't even own - that one understands why he's such an asshole. That this is bookended with his insistence on being the most insufferable son of a bitch around makes it all the more effective: this is a man who's so religiously followed faith in The Field that it makes him unpleasant, a danger. His smug look at the auction tells you just how unpleasant; his sorrow as the truth of the land sale is revealed is...well, not moving, because he sucks, but one certainly feels the impact of watching a man's entire world crumble before him. Harris gives you the full tragedy, one worthy of...well, one wants to say Shakespeare but, the way he plays it, it's worthy of the Old Testament.
1. Jeremy Irons as Claus von Bülow
Reversal of Fortune
only nomination; Golden Globe winner for Best Actor - Drama, LAFCA Awards winner for Best Actor; NYFCC Awards runner-up for Best Actor
I cannot believe this was the approach he took to this part, though I guess I'm not sure how else one would play it...a testament, frankly, to how indelible he is in the role. There is nothing instinctively carnal about the guy and yet, when we see him with women, there is a way that he plays, knowingly emphasizing his own breeding and its allure, that makes his appeal make sense...for a certain type of woman. Irons also nails, without outright imitating, the bizarre accent of a modern aristocrat, muddied by cross-continental bloodlines but still distinctly proper. Most of all, he somehow manages this balance that could convince you of Von Bülow's guilt or innocence either way, and does it by emphasizing one pertinent point of his personality: whatever the truth, Claus believes he did nothing wrong. You always buy the truth of that, as Irons hits home with direct eye contact again and again. All these layers, wrapped in a performance that won the Golden Globe for Drama but, honestly, would be just as accurate in Musical/Comedy - it is a hilarious performance skewering the rich and impoverished rich alike. Wonderful.
Tomorrow, the nominees for Best Actress: Kathy Bates (Misery), Anjelica Huston (The Grifters), Julia Roberts (Pretty Woman), Meryl Streep (Postcards from the Edge), and Joanne Woodward (Mr. & Mrs. Bridge).
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