Oscar Faves – Best Supporting Actor

In honor of today’s Oscar Nominations, I will be doing five blog posts of my favorite Oscar winners in select categories (Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor). The parameters are as follows:

These are only Oscar winners and not who should have won. That would open another can of worms.

These are only from movies I have seen and are my personal favorites. That might exclude a few of your favorites.

They are offered in alphabetical order as I’d hate to rank them.

Here goes:

Benicio del Toro – “Traffic” (2000) – A performance largely in Spanish walking the line between good-hearted desire and corruption. He fit perfectly into this ensemble movie and almost had a larger than life presence among the bigger named stars.

Robert De Niro – “The Godfather, Part II” (1974) – Again, mostly spoken in Italian, this exemplifies an actor showing more character with less emphasis. The change from the grocer’s assistant to the Mafia Don is incredible.

Walter Huston – “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948) – Director John Huston, the actor’s son, convinced him to perform without his dentures. That was addition by subtraction. A former leading man, the elder Hustom dove into the character with gusto.

Martin Landau – “Ed Wood” (1994) – The word ‘pathos’ is not used as much as it should. Landau drew upon Lugosi the man rather than the character he was most known for to give us an individual with a tremendous amount of pride.

Christopher Walken – “The Deer Hunter” (1978) – The character of Nick shows his burdens and his troubles even before his traumatic experiences in Viet Nam. I do not know if I have witnessed a soul more lost than what Walken presents.

That’s my list. What about yours.

Nest blog post: Best Supporting Actress.