When the co-stars align
One movie, two best supporting nominations
This year’s Oscar race is interesting on a number of fronts. Greta Gerwig becomes only the fifth woman to be nominated for best director. (Kathryn Bigelow remains the sole winner.) Jordan Peele is the fifth black man in that category, though none has won. Lebanon received its firstever best foreign- language nomination for The Insult, which coincidentally opens in Toronto on Jan. 26, and in Calgary and Vancouver in February. And The Shape of Water’s 13 nominations wasn’t even a record — All About Eve, Titanic and last year’s La La Land all had 14.
But there’s also a more trivial oddity, in the best supporting actor category, with two nominees from the same movie. Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson are both nominated for their work in Three Billboards Outside Ebbings, Missouri, which also has nominations for best actress (Frances McDormand), original screenplay, editing and score.
Multiple nominations are nothing new. Back in 1936, Mutiny on the Bounty produced three best- actor nominees in Clark Gable, Charles Laughton and Franchot Tone. ( They all lost to Victor McLaglen in The In- former.) On the Waterfront from 1955 had supportingactor nominations for Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden and Rod Steiger. (Again, the split vote resulted in a win for someone else; Edmond O’Brien in The Barefoot Contessa.)
More recently, studios have tried to stop multiple nominations by campaigning for one performer as a lead, another as supporting, even when that is patently not the case. Take 2003’s The Hours, where Julianne Moore was nominated for a supportingactress Oscar despite having far more screen time than best- actress winner Nicole Kidman from the same film. ( Even stranger, Moore was also up for best actress that year in Far From Heaven.)
The last time lead performers squared off was when Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon were both nominated for 1992’s Thelma and Louise. (Jodie Foster won for The Silence of the Lambs.) But in the best supporting actress category these matchups have happened eight times this century, most recently with Jessica Chastin and Octavia Spencer in 2012’s The Help. (Spencer won.)
Which brings us to Three Billboards. Rockwell plays a violent, racist cop in the movie and has been an awards front- runner since the film played the Venice and Toronto festivals in September. He has already won the Screen Actors Guild prize, the Broadcast Film Critics award and a Golden Globe for the role.
Harrelson’s role as the police chief in the same movie is a quieter performance but also a more nuanced one; initially he seems to be one of the film’s villains, but as things progress we realize he’s doing the best he can in a bad situation. Though his character is the one called out on the film’s titular billboards for not making an arrest in a local murder case, it’s not for lack of trying.
The depth and gradation of Harrelson’s performance should argue for a win, but the numbers suggest otherwise — his only other win for the role was from the Philadelphia film critics’ association. And we see much less of him in the film’s second half, while Rockwell racks up more screen time and, it can be argued, more of a character arc.
Rockwell’s momentum also suggests a vote-split won’t happen. Although it would be great to see Richard Jenkins win his first Oscar for The Shape of Water, or Willem Dafoe for The Florida Project, or Christopher Plummer get his second for All the Money in the World, this is almost certainly Rockwell’s prize.
MATCHUPS HAVE HAPPENED EIGHT TIMES THIS CENTURY.