Heath Ledger as Best Supporting Actor?
Via slashfilm, I’ve seen these kinds of ads all over variety.com nowadays, WB is pushing for Heath Ledger to get an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor of the year for his mesmerizing role as The Joker in The Dark Knight. Academy Award ballots are mailed on December 26th, polls close on January 12th, and the nominations are announced on January 22nd. I want Heath to get nominated, hell I think he deserves to win but… will he get recognized by the Oscars that tend to look down on comic book-based characters and comedy??
Paramount wants Robert Downey Jr. to be nominated in this category for his role as the black platoon leader in Tropic Thunder but I think that’s a long shot. My other pick besides Heath Ledger at this point, is Eddie Marsan who gave an outstanding performance in Happy-Go-Lucky, which wasn’t seen by many audience here in the U.S.
Should Heath Ledger get the nomination? Who else do you think deserves a nomination for Best Supporting actor this year?
4 Comments so far
What Do You Think?
I always kinda liked Heath Ledger as an actor. Ofcours, when you see ‘10 things Blabla’ or ‘A Knight’s Tale’ you know that the performances aren’t going to be oscar-material, but somehow he always managed to stay above a certain level. And he wasn’t bad in more serious movies like ‘The Patriot’ and ‘The Four Feathers’.
But when ‘The Brothers Grimm’ came out, -even if I thought the movie wasn’t great- , I just knew Ledger was capable of doing a lot more then people would think. I know, it’s not a movie that shouts “Academy Award!”, but his ‘Jacob’ had a lot of little performance-uplifting details. The way the character moves, talks, reacts on situations, the nervous ticks … that thing he did with his eyes. There was not one single moment that he was out of character. Not one flaw in that performance where I wasn’t thinking -not even for a second- that I was watching Heath Ledger. When Matt Damon was a bit like, yeah, just Matt Damon in this one, his Grimm-brother had created a realy nice character. In some way I had the feeling he could do very interesting things in the future.
And yup, later ‘Brokeback Mountain’ just blew me away. Thát’s what he’s capable of. There was absolutely no doubt that he should have won ‘Best Actor’ that year. Always thought that was a damn shame.
When the first rumors came about Heath playing The Joker, there was a lot of negative buzz at the very beginning. I remember on a few forums I was the only one who was actually very pleased with that news. When I thought of the more realistic Batman that ‘Begins’ was combined with the two performances I saw in ‘BB’ and ‘TBG’, It could not go wrong. Ofcours, when the first pictures arrived almost everyone was more than curious (in a positive way) and the first video’s had the world gone crazy. The man delivered and more.
I think it would be the right thing to give him the Award. Not only because he already deserved it for another movie, but because the performance actually was outstanding, no kiddin’. And seriously … if someone like ‘Jack Sparrow’ gets nominated in a more important category as ‘Supporting’, why the hell wouldn’t ‘The Joker’ just win the damn thing? Out of respect for the actor, I say YES!
* Haven’t seen ‘Monsters Ball’
** Sorry for the bad english
You’ve made some very good points there, Esteban..
I believe that many shares your point of view in that.. it is long overdue for Heath Ledger to get an Oscar
Granted, His performance was great in Brokeback Mountain but it was a bit tough because he had to go up against another amazing performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote and Hoffman won, rightfully so.
It was a tough decision, really.
But Monster’s Ball (which you really have to see), Candy, and Brokeback Mountain and of course The Dark Knight all prove that he’s always been an Oscar material all along.
And yes, definitely…let us forget 10 Things I hate About You, Casanova, and A Knight’s Tale ever happened.
I like your point about how johnny Depp could get nomination for Jack Sparrow then surely Ledger should get one for the Joker..
Good observation.
We’ll see if The OSCARS are willing to give an award to a comic book character… or to a person who already died, (posthumous Oscar win rarely happened in the history of the event)
By the way, Your English is OK, Esteban.
Your grammar is no problem at all.
Blogging is a form of speech, not of writing,
therefore, here in Rama’s SCREEN.. we tend to grow grammar rules out the window and welcome freedom of speech,.. movie-related of course
I’m just glad my English is understandable afterall.
And I will check out ‘Monsters Ball’ one day, that’s for sure.
I Spain they say, “I, in part, totally agree!”.
Which means, I totally think you´re both right, but then again, what use would that an Academy make to HIM?
He is dead, and you get money and promotion and good scripts and contract after an award and dunno… maybe somebody living might kinda “enjoy” the winning a bit more…
it is also true that many who won, didn’t actually turn out with good movies/scripts in the future, look at Halle Berry, Cuba Gooding Jr and the old guy from Little Miss Sunshine, Arkin…
Come on, that one didn’t really deserve to win against Djimon Hounson in Blood Diamond and Mark Whelberg in The Departed….
anyway, YES to nomination, NO to winning.
(even if he’s nominated, he’s going to win..
)