First Among Equals
The thin line between awards categories
Hollywood’s awards season is on in full force, with the Academy Awards (more commonly known as the Oscars) coming up in a few days. The Academy Awards are considered the pinnacle of awards within the film industry — and within this ceremony, the awards for best actor, best actress, best supporting actress, and best supporting actor are considered among the most prestigious for screen performers.
However, the definition of these awards is quite vague — the nomination of a performer in lead/ supporting categories is determined by the voting members of the academy, who are swayed by concerted efforts by studios, who occasionally attempt to strategically place performers in categories they are more likely to win.
This has led to some controversial choices in the past. In 2015, Rooney Mara was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in Carol, despite having comparable screen time to Cate Blanchett, who was nominated for Best Actress — rumour has it, the producers did not want the two actresses competing against each other. Another such example was the nomination of Meryl Streep as Best Actress for The Devil Wears Prada, despite being a supporting character across most metrics (screen time, number of scenes, number of dialogues, focus of the story) when compared to Anne Hathaway for the same movie.
Are there clear criteria to enable making this distinction? We explore some of the potential metrics and methods below.
Screen time, number of dialogues
Perhaps the easiest and most obvious — the performer with the most screen time (and consequently, the most share of screen time) or the maximum dialogue (number of dialogues is usually correlated with screen time) should be the nominee for leading role, with all others in the running for supporting role.
A detailed analysis of screen time for nominees and winners is captured on ScreenTimeCentral —showcasing the longest Oscar-nominated performances as well as the shortest. These lists highlight a few intriguing discrepancies — Best Actor/Actress nominees with < 25% screen time (including Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs, and Marlon Brando in The Godfather), or Best Supporting Actor/Actress nominees with over 60% of screen time.
One confounder to any such analysis is the effect of gender — as is well known, women tend to have less representation on screen in movies. The chart below, from a study conducted by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media highlights this — in movies with a male lead, women tend to have a vanishingly low proportion of screen time; in the converse case, the difference in screen time between male and female characters is lower in movies with female leads (and of course, movies with female leads are much fewer than movies with male leads). Consequently, any attempt to use screen time or dialogues would need to control for gender — at least until Hollywood improves in terms of representation.
Additionally, it is important to note that this criterion only requires a performer to have the most screen time and dialogues; for example, Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs may only appear for 21% of the movie, but he is indisputably the leading male character, with no other male performer having even half as much screen time as him. Does this make him a Best Actor nominee, as the male performer with the most time spent onscreen, or a supporting character behind Jodie Foster (who appears in 47% of the movie)? The same arguments applied, with a different result, to Ke Huy Quan being a Supporting Actor behind Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All at Once.
However, one iconic performance is indisputably mistagged — Marlon Brando’s performance in The Godfather would have been bumped down to Supporting Actor if this criterion was used. Al Pacino’s Michael has 38% of screen time, significantly more than Brando’s Vito (and Michael is perhaps also more central to the movie).
Centrality
Another methodology, as used in my film theory class aeons ago, is to identify the character without whom the plot would not progress. Who sets the events of the movie into motion? Who, if removed from the system, would prevent the movie from even taking place?
In some movies, this would give intuitive results —Marlon Brando’s aforementioned Vito in The Godfather justifies his nomination as Best Actor, given his fateful choice in turning down Sollozzo’s request at the start of the movie sets into motion most, if not all, of the subsequent events.
However, this could also give some truly absurd results — for example, the shark in Jaws, or Harry Lime in The Third Man, would be elevated to central character status given the movies are built around the search for these characters. Another confounder to any such analysis is the bias towards specific roles — this metric would heavily bias towards villains, for example. James Bond movies are not often in the running for acting Oscars, but this metric would bias towards the Bond villain being defined as the lead, in that their evil world domination plan sets the events of the movie in motion.
This discrepancy can be somewhat resolved through two interrelated metrics that are relevant to the definition of centrality. The first is that of the story arc — which character goes through the most changes over the course of the movie? The second is in terms of interconnections — which character interacts with, and influences, the most number of other characters in the movie? The centrality of a character now derives from a combination of factors, including their own changes, the changes they bring about in other characters, and their influence on initiating all these changes.
Brando’s Vito justifies his centrality through this, given everyone is influenced by him, and his story arc undergoes significant changes; however, Pacino’s Michael also has a strong case through this definition. Ke Huy Quan’s Waymond in Everything Everywhere All at Once is an interesting example where these criteria work well — his character arc is subordinate to that of Michelle Yeoh’s Evelyn in terms of changes over the course of the movie. While it could be argued that his transformation into Alpha-Waymond kickstarts the events of the movie, Evelyn’s story arc is more central to the movie in terms of the interconnections, conflict with other characters, and changes in their own persona, as well as the audience’s view of them.
While this analysis does have its flaws, it could add an interesting subjective tie-breaker when choosing between two performers with similar screen time and dialogues; it could also provide compelling arguments to swap performers between categories based on their importance to the script.
Perspective and point of view
Another somewhat subjective methodology is to identify whose perspective the movie is from, and/or who the movie focuses on. The former essentially seeks to identify the “narrator” who is taking us along the journey; the latter seeks to identify the centerpiece of the narrator’s attention.
The narrator is an interesting beast — because they are driving the storyline, they often have significant screen time and dialogues; however, they could be first-person narrators, or third-person narrators. An example of the latter is Kevin Spacey’s Verbal from The Usual Suspects — his narrative in the present day guides us (and the police) through the flashbacks, enabling him to feature in both the present and past timelines of the story. However, he was nominated (and won) as a part of the Best Supporting Actor category; this is additionally surprising, given he also had the maximum screen time of 34.8% through the movie. The converse held for Morgan Freeman’s Red in The Shawshank Redemption — although he is narrating the story of Andy Dufresne, Freeman’s portrayal of Red was nominated for Best Actor.
This is again a slightly subjective criterion — and perhaps cannot be used as a standalone metric, but is a useful add-on while comparing to roles of similar screen presence.
Is there an answer?
While each of these methods has a strong case to be made for adoption as a primary metric in distinguishing between lead and supporting performers, there is no clear answer. A combination of interconnected factors intrinsic to the performance, blended with a bit of luck, as well as external influences from studios and other nominees — all of these come together to form an opaque distinction between lead and supporting roles.
As with life, being memorable does not necessarily derive solely from being present for the longest time, or being the most central, or even from controlling the narrative.
