BEST ACTOR
EDDIE REDMAYNE
DANIEL DAY-LEWIS lifted an Oscar in 1989 for his excellence as a cerebral palsy sufferer in My Left Foot, and as the profoundly disabled Stephen Hawking in The Theory Of Everything, Redmayne gives a similarly nuanced performance. I’d give him the Oscar now, but the bookies consider him second favourite to Michael Keaton.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH
IF THE list of Best Actor nominees matches my own, that would put British performers in the majority. At the very least, I’d expect to see two of our finest young actors nominated, both for their roles as blighted boffins. As the socially awkward Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, Cumberbatch didn’t have to give quite such an intensely physical performance as Redmayne, but he is brilliant all the same, a completely convincing study in nervous tics and unnerving mannerisms.
TIMOTHY SPALL
FOR his thunderous tour de force as painter J. M. W. Turner, Spall ( pictured) should be neck and neck in the betting with Redmayne, in my own estimation, and if he doesn’t even get a nomination then it will be a rank injustice. Alas, the Academy rather specialises in rank injustice, so it could be that he won’t. But honestly, what a performance he gives in Mike Leigh’s marvellous film Mr Turner: grunting and hurrumphing his way through Victorian England, making us laugh and cry.
DAVID OYELOWO
OYELOWO’S performance as Martin Luther King in Selma is more than just a masterpiece of impersonation, but it is a masterpiece all the same. He looks and sounds just like the great American civil rights leader — quite an achievement for a boy from Oxfordshire — and powerfully conveys King’s huge charisma, and strength of character (if not so much his many foibles, though that is more a fault of the script).
MICHAEL KEATON
THE Academy voters love a comeback, and Keaton offers them two — the first, as his character, faded actor Riggan Thomson, and the second as himself, storming back into the limelight after some pretty nondescript films. He is brilliant in Birdman, handling the darkness and the comedy with equal skill, and somehow making us root for a narcissistic, emotional basket case.
STEVE CARELL
WHEN a comic actor plays deadly straight, or for that matter when a straight actor does comedy, awards voters tend to take notice. And there aren’t many better examples of this unexpected versatility than Carell’s brilliant, unsettling performance, behind make-up and prosthetics that make him look strangely like a burns victim, as multimillionaire and murderer John E. Du Pont, in the absorbing Foxcatcher.