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2003 AWARDS Feb. 29, 2004 |
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Is it the Best Way to Win an Oscar?
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Will it be Theron's ticket
to Oscar ownership?
of TheColumnists.com
Glamorous Charlize Theron put on a ton of weight, put away the makeup kit and purposely dumped her femininity in the dustbin. She must have bit the bullet every time she walked by a mirror while she was filming "Monster." But it was all part of her commitment to turning herself into lesbian serial killer Aileen Wuornos for the movie. Result: A Best Actress Oscar nomination and the position as odds-on favorite to win the 2003 competition.
Couldn't the makeup guys have padded her out a bit or digitally enhanced her enough to fill the character's tawdry outfits? Well, probably, even though "Monster" was a low-budget picture.
But that would have been stupid because Oscar voters really like to rally behind somebody who goes to extremes to really get into the role.
I mean, it worked pretty well just last year when beautiful Nicole Kidman had the makeup dudes graft a new--and not so petite--nose onto her picture-perfect puss, just so she'd look more like Virginia Woolf, her character in "The Hours." Result: Kidman earned her first Oscar.
And the gals aren't the only ones who resort to extremes. Consider the case of Robert De Niro, who gained so much weight to play aging ex-prizefighter Jake La Motta for the final scenes in "Raging Bull" (1980) that he looked as if he'd been pumped full of helium each day before shooting began. What's more, De Niro went to live with makeup artist Michael Westmore while he gained the weight, giving Westmore a whole lot of extra time to work out the specifics for turning De Niro into La Motta.
Result: The Best Actor Oscar for De Niro.
Hilary Swank did everything but submit to surgery to turn herself into a boy, so she could effectively play Brandon Teena, the real-life girl who passed for a boy in "Boys Don't Cry" (1999). Result: Swank's Best Actress Oscar. The same dodge worked for Linda Hunt way back in 1983 when she played a man in "The Year of Living Dangerously." Hunt was so convincing that she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar--and probably still gets funny looks when she walks into any ladies' rest room.
Sure, anybody can change sexes or put on weight or wear a makeup "appliance" that radically changes their appearance, but is that acting? No, it isn't. If the performance isn't there, then "going to extremes" doesn't usually help. You can make Woody Allen look like James Bond with special effects, but if Woody still sounded like a neurotic, middleaged New Yorker when telling the barman he wants his martinis "shaken, not stirred," then who's gonna believe he's Agent 007?
Audiences also love to know that an actor is taking a real chance by tackling a role that's way outside his or her usual image territory. Moviegoers give extra credit if the actor undergoes some kind of rugged physical regimen to get into condition to play the part. Major points are scored if the actor has to master some kind of special skill or speak with a foreign accent that's convincing.
Elizabeth Taylor got real bragging points--and her second Best Actress Oscar--for totally de-glamorizing herself to play an aging, overweight, hard-drinking shrew in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" (1966). Of course, Taylor was sort of physically headed in that direction anyway, but who knew that then?
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quadriplegic artist Christy Brown in 'My Left Foot.' By going to extremes to play this part, Day-Lewis won an Oscar as Best Actor of 1989. |
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Many actors are assumed to be just "playing themselves" in their pictures. For years, John Wayne was thought to be a nothing actor because he was usually just his same old big, flinty-eyed, action hero character in film after film. He was nominated for, but didn't win the Best Actor Oscar for "Sands of Iwo Jima" in 1949. Even though most people recognized he was a little better than usual in that heroic role, the collective opinion was it wasn't much of a stretch for him.
But in 1969, Wayne played Rooster Cogburn, a fat, one-eyed, half-soused old lawman in "True Grit"--and suddenly had himself a Best Actor Oscar for not only trying something way out of the ordinary, but also for making fun of himself and all his old western hero characters.in the process.
In 1937, MGM took a big risk and cast beautiful Luise Rainer, who had won the 1936 Best Actress Oscar playing gorgeous showgirl Anna Held in "The Great Ziegfeld," as O-Lan, an inarticulate Chinese peasant woman, in "The Good Earth." Except for those infrequent scenes when O-Lan spoke--and, inexplicably, did so with Rainer's thick Austrian accent--it was a total transformation. Academy voters decided it was worth a second Oscar for Rainer--the first time anyone had won back to back Oscars.
Though "going to extremes" doesn't always result in an Oscar, the record is pretty impressive for those who did try it. Here are some other famous examples:
* Jane Wyman, best known for slight comedies and unchallenging melodramas, turned dramatic in "Johnny Belinda," winning the 1948 Best Actress Oscar by playing a deaf mute who becomes a rape victim. Wyman had no dialogue in the entire film and had to learn to express herself without words.
* Jose Ferrer won the Best Actor Oscar for 1950's "Cyrano de Bergerac" by playing a courtly, swashbuckling character with a nose so long that it looked like a weapon of mass destruction.
* Sophia Loren won the Best Actress Oscar of 1961 by stripping away every vestige her sex bomb image in "Two Women," playing a desperate, starving Italian war refugee who's gang-raped, along with her teenage daughter.
* Patty Duke, a child actress of then limited experienced, won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for 1962 by convincingly playing deaf, blind and mute Helen Keller.
* John Mills, one of England's most distinguished actors, submitted to a major makeup ordeal in "Ryan's Daughter" (1970) in order to play the village idiot--and, after scores of roles as literate British gentlemen, won the Best Supporting Actor award for his risky characterization.
* Sissy Spacek not only transformed herself into a lookalike for country singer Loretta Lynn in "Coal Miner's Daughter" (1980), but she also mastered Lynn's singing style--and recorded all the music tracks for the movie. Result: Best Actress Oscar.
* Ben Kingsley didn't stop at just having himself totally redesigned into a physical clone of the Mahatma Gandhi in the 1982 "Gandhi." He also learned to use the spinning wheel and loom that Gandhi used to keep himself calm and focused. Result: Best Actor Oscar for 1982.
* Dustin Hoffman earned his second Best Actor Oscar in 1988 by playing an autistic "idiot savant" in "Rain Man," mastering a weird way of walking, talking and doing practically everything.
* Daniel Day-Lewis spent
weeks living in a wheelchair in order to play quadriplegic artist
Christy Brown, a cerebral palsy victim who painted with a brush
held between his toes, in "My Left Foot" (1989). Result:
Best Actor Oscar.
©2004 by Ron Miller. The glamorous photo of Charlize Theron is from her official website. The photo from 'Monster' is courtesy Newmarket Films.
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