"I can't deny the fact that, right now..."

In his recent post "Jack Nicholson explains the Oscars for you," Jim Emerson asked an interesting question: Have you ever been watching a movie and gotten the impression that the actor(s) are thinking more about Oscars than their characters?

Well, who hasn’t?

This point gets raised often during the awards season, and I have always had mixed feelings about it. It is not necessarily a bad thing per se – an actor’s thinking about an Oscar more than their character isn't, necessarily, tantamount to whoring, or selling out. Similarly, a bad performance(in a “weighty” film) can exist in spite of the actor’s genuine concentration in the character they’re playing, without their entertaining even the smallest thought of recognition (or validation). And then there are simply terrible performances where the actor doesn’t think about anything at all – I’m looking at you, Benigni.

For example, albeit a wonderful performance (and an even greater film), Peter Sellers’s turn as Chance in Being There fits the criteria of an actor thinking more about the Oscar than their character. From the same year, it’s always seemed to me that Sally Field, too, was more concerned with getting her hands round the golden statue than Norma Rae, the character. Whereas, what I perceive to be, Sellers’ pandering for a best actor nod does not bother me in the slightest, Sally Field’s does. Consequently, I have always been biased towards the actress – Places in the Heart doesn’t have a place in my heart, and she even spoils Mrs Doubtfire for me (as far as I’m concerned, if a film features a man in drag, then it's already done half the work). For me, this intentness on the Oscar is a relatively modern phenomenon going back to the seventies with Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were, or George Burns and Walter Matthau in The Sunshine Boys. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any examples from earlier (I’ve never seen Charly, so maybe Cliff Robertson? I don’t know).

I recently watched Gandhi for the first time in twenty years, and Ben Kingsley’s performance reeked to me of Oscar-bait. There is a Performance in every single scene with him – sometimes an actor just has to say the line, and do what he is told. As David Mamet says, the nail doesn’t have to look like a ship, it has to look like a nail. I know Stanley Kubrick argued that every single shot in every single scene of a movie had to communicate the essential truth and meaning of the film in question, but that was Kubrick. When one’s making a biography, a form not suited to drama in the first place, at times, one has to keep certain things simple. Including the acting.

The respective performances of four of the actors who made Edward Copeland's survey of Worst of the Best Actor winners also have "For Your Consideration" written all over them: Denzel Washington in Training Day, Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump, and AL PACINO (a name which, by law, has to be in ALL CAPS) in Scent of a Woman. In fact, it’s a given that an actor playing a drunk, disabled or plain old mental character has, on their mind, more than just the evocation of truth and beauty through their craft. They want that statuette, and they want it bad. Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot is the exception that proves the rule – Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York isn’t. Robert DeNiro’s lugubrious work in Awakenings, Jack Nicholson’s hammy and histrionic turns in The Departed and Ironweed, Sean Penn's fidgety performance in I Am Sam – in each case, the actor’s preoccupation with the Oscar overshadows their performance on the screen.

Almost all modern actors have done it one time or another: Sean Penn in Dead Man Walking, Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich, Brad Pitt in 12 Monkeys, John Hurt in Midnight Express, Warren Beatty in Bugsy, Vanessa Redgrave in Atonement, Ben Kingsley in Schindler’s List, Eddie Murphy and Beyonce Knowles in Dreamgirls, Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption, Danny DeVito in Man On The Moon (a performance I simply ADORE), Meryl Streep and Cher in Silkwood…

Of course, my choices betray more about me than they do about the actors in question. Good or bad, we impose on all actors baggage that we bring along – which, admittedly, they’ve helped us pack in the first place. It’s just that sometimes that baggage pales in comparison to the actor’s lust for recognition.