Viggo Mortensen was the Middleburg Film Festival promoting Green Book this weekend. Green Book won the People’s Choice at TIFF last month. And Viggo is definitely a contender for Best Actor for his performance in the film, alongside Mahershala Ali. Ethan Hawke, meanwhile, was at the London Film Festival promoting a film he directed, Blaze. Ethan, by the way, has been in the Best Actor conversation all year for his work in First Reformed. It remains to be seen whether or not he will campaign for it because, you know, that might be too “professional” for him. And then there’s Willem Dafoe, who plays Vincent Van Gogh in Julian Schnabel’s At Eternity’s Gate, for which he won the Best Actor award at the Venice Film Festival.
Almost every year at the Oscars, there’s all kinds of talk about who’s “due”. The “due” game this year, however, as you can see, seems pretty crowded. Bradley is the current Best Actor Oscar frontrunner. He’s been nominated three times before. Some would say he’s “due”. Is he more “due” than Viggo though? Or Willem, who’s been acting for 40 years? Is Coop more due than even Ethan? If they’re all “due”, is anyone actually “due”?
I guess the only one who might not be “due”, since he already has an Oscar, is Christian Bale. Bale will be going for it though, as Dick Cheney. And, besides, you might say that Bale is like Cate Blanchett for many in the Academy. Cate won her Supporting Oscar before her lead Oscar. And before she won her lead Oscar, for Blue Jasmine, people did talk about how “due” she was. The point is, Coop hasn’t locked this up, not yet.
