Why This Year Is Leo’s Year
Everyone make way for Leo on his road to Oscar triumph.
After winning best actor at the recent Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG Awards), all bets are on Leonardo DiCaprio to take home his first Academy Award at the Oscars on February 28, 2016.
Leo is nominated for best actor in a leading role in this year’s survival epic, The Revenant, and has been nominated for Oscars four times previously in the films What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Aviator, Blood Diamond, and The Wolf of Wall Street. In all his films, Leo proves that he has reputable talent as an actor and continues to be Oscar worthy as his career progresses with the biggest names and directors in Hollywood. Already, he has worked alongside Sam Mendes, Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, and Alejandro González Iñárritu, the director of last year’s big Oscar winner Birdman as well as The Revenant.
Although The Revenant received some mixed reactions from critics and audiences, there is no arguing that Leo gave one of the best and most compelling performances of his career as the abandoned fur trapper, Hugh Glass, and deserves all the recognition and acclaim he’s receiving. At the SAG Awards, the room of celebrities and stars proved to be on his side, accompanying Leo with a standing ovation as he walked across stage to accept his award.
With the Oscars approaching next, Leo’s performance continues to build momentum and, more so than ever, it looks like he’s the most likely candidate to receive an Oscar for best actor.
Also in the running for best Actor In a Leading Role are Bryan Cranston in Trumbo, Matt Damon in The Martian, Michael Fassbender in Steve Jobs, and Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl.
The competition is as crowded as ever, but Leo stands out from the rest with his brutally realistic portrayal and extreme commitment to the role of Hugh Glass in The Revenant. In fact, he was so dedicated to his role that he proved he would do almost anything including a graphic bear-attack, hiding in animal carcasses, and eating raw bison liver. In an interview with Yahoo Movies, Leo explains that many of the scenes were some of the most difficult he’s ever had to do in his entire career.
Leo says, “Whether it’s going in and out of frozen rivers, or sleeping in animal carcasses, or what I ate on set, I was enduring freezing cold and possible hypothermia constantly.”
So why does this help Leo’s odds of getting an Oscar? In a recent article by Katey Rich, she explains just that. Rich discusses the on-set struggles and brutal weather conditions involved in the filming of The Revenant and how they, ultimately, benefit in Leo’s favor. She writes:
The Oscars love to see you work for it, from the titanic productions of The Lord of the Rings and Titanic to the physical challenges of Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot or Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything. One look at the photos of DiCaprio in The Revenant and you know he’s passed that test.
Rich is referring to the extremes that previous Oscar winning movies and actors in the past have gone to in order to make their efforts stand out from the rest, inevitably paying off and earning them Academy recognition. As Rich states, the Academy loves to see actors “work for it” and Leo’s performance in The Revenant certainly demonstrates the level of exuberance, perseverance, and devotion that makes an Oscar winner.
Leo’s win at the SAG Awards is also one of the best indicators that he is the front-runner for an Oscar. Over the past 25 years, the SAG Awards have been one of the most reliable methods of predicting Oscar winners, especially in the best actor category. In the last 11 years alone, the best actor award has been attributed to the same person in both the Oscars and the SAG Awards with the small exception of Sean Penn winning over Johnny Depp in 2003.
However, there won’t be another exception this year. Leo’s SAG win, combined with best actor wins from various other societies and awards ceremonies including the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards, makes him this year’s favorite contestant for the Oscar.
After years of being the underdog and subject of countless Internet memes and popular debate, all signs are pointing to Leo. If you listen closely, you can already hear the crowd clapping and cheering his name. With the Oscars right around the corner, this year will finally be Leo’s year.
