Unrecognized Genius & the Academy Awards VIII
Best Actor: 1994
Nominees: Morgan Freeman (THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION), Nigel Hawthorne (THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE), Tom Hanks (FORREST GUMP), Paul Newman (NOBODY’S FOOL), John Travolta (PULP FICTION)
All of the nominees in 1994 were veteran actors — two of them had already won the Best Actor Oscar — but the real story of the evening was the resurgence of John Travolta. It took a lore-obsessed visionary like Quentin Tarantino to cast Travolta, whose most recent work had been the Look Who’s Talking series, as slick-haired gangster Vincent Vega, but none of that would have meant a thing if the actor hadn’t been up to the task. In the end, Travolta hit it out of the park and earned his second Academy Award nomination.
It’s a solid list. But it omits some other truly fantastic performances…
Jim Carrey, THE MASK
The Academy has never favored comedic performances (or comedic films) and it’s a massive oversight. To pull off a comedic performance and make it convincing and ground it in some kind of truth — that is a hell of a tight rope to walk. The Mask requires Jim Carrey to be as zany as anyone in film history and he is…but as his on-target ad libs attest, he never loses sight of the truth of his character(s). He leaves everything he’s got on the screen but he centers it around something real. That’s award-worthy comedy.
Johnny Depp, ED WOOD
For a time, Johnny Depp and Tim Burton brought out the best in each other. Ed Wood was the second of their partnerships (after Edward Scissorhands in 1990) and the resulting performance that Depp gives here is just as idiosyncratic. To say that Depp’s Ed Wood is recognizably human may be a stretch, but he isn’t really supposed to be. He is playing an exaggeration here, not too far removed from a character in an Ed Wood film, but with all due respects to those actors, Depp is much more consistent (and congenial).
Woody Harrelson, NATURAL BORN KILLERS
When he filmed Natural Born Killers, Woody Harrelson was best known as Woody Boyd, the aw-shucks bartender from the hit NBC sitcom Cheers. While his range as an actor has since been proven time and time again, in 1994, his portrayal of serial killer Mickey Knox was a shock. Rewatching it now, the shock remains, but it is not a shock of surprise. It is the shock of witnessing a monster brought to life and rampaging through Oliver Stone’s America for two-plus hours.
Brandon Lee, THE CROW
James O’Barr’s comic book has been adapted into four films and a short-lived Canadian TV series. Five actors have portrayed the lead character (twice this character was the original, Eric Draven). Some of these performances are good. None of them can hold a candle in the darkness to the original performance given by Brandon Lee. He had already shown unquestionable star quality in the thriller Rapid Fire, but in The Crow — under layers of makeup, no less — Lee is simply magnetic.
Tim Robbins, THE HUDSUCKER PROXY
Tim Robbins, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION
I had no idea I was such a fan of Tim Robbins. But when you take into account performances like the ones he gives in The Hudsucker Proxy and The Shawshank Redemption, how could anyone not be, at least in 1994? And what extraordinarily different roles these are, an aimless simpleton in the Coen Brothers’ comic fable and a steadfast intellectual in the Darabont morality tale. And to not be nominated for either? P.S. In 1994, Robbins also co-starred in the Einstein comedy I.Q. and he’s very good in that as well.
Kevin Spacey, SWIMMING WITH SHARKS
Does your script require an odious white collar blowhard? Kevin Spacey’s your man. And he could have just gone through the motions here, but the fact that writer-director Greg Huang sets his blowhard in Hollywood and makes him a producer seems to have enticed extra venom from his star, because Spacey has rarely been better than he is here as slimeball supreme Buddy Ackerman.
Next time, we check out some of the Best Actresses of 1994…