One of the less publicized elements of the Academy Awards is who gets invited to join the Academy every year. Every year, a press release gets sent out and it usually gets pushed down to the proverbial page six of Hollywood trade magazines. It doesn’t really get much more than an obligatory post on corresponding entertainment websites.
From digging up press releases, it appears that about 20-25
are from the actors branch. This often includes people who have just been
nominated for the first time (provided they didn’t get an at-large invite).
This is the 2014 list which includes 5 first-time nominees
from the year before, a nominee from 2005 (David Straithairn) who’s paperwork
must have gotten lost in the shuffle, a variety of people who were hot at the
moment (Josh Hutcherson coming off the Hunger Games; Julia Louis-Dreyfuss
having the hit movie Enough Said) with people who had been amassing notable
roles for a while (Ben Foster, Beth Grant)
Barkhad
Abdi – “Captain Phillips”, Clancy Brown – “The Hurricane,” “The Shawshank
Redeption”
Paul Dano – “12 Years a Slave,” “Prisoners”, *Michael Fassbender – “12 Years a
Slave,” “Shame”,
Ben Foster – “Lone Survivor,” “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints”, Beth Grant – “The
Artist,” “No Country for Old Men”, Clark Gregg – “Much Ado about Nothing,”
“Marvel’s The Avengers”, *Sally Hawkins – “Blue Jasmine,” “Happy-Go-Lucky”, Josh
Hutcherson – “The Hunger Games,” “The Kids Are All Right”. Julia Louis-Dreyfus
– “Enough Said,” “Planes”, Kelly Macdonald – “Brave,” “No Country for Old Men”,
Mads Mikkelsen – “The Hunt,” “Casino Royale”, Joel McKinnon Miller – “Super 8,”
“The Truman Show”, Cillian Murphy – “The Dark Knight Rises,” “Inception”, *Lupita Nyong'o –
“Non-Stop,” “12 Years a Slave”, Rob Riggle – “21 Jump Street,” “The Hangover”, Chris
Rock – “Grown Ups 2,” “Madagascar” *June Squibb – “Nebraska,” “About Schmidt”, Jason Statham – “Parker,” “Lock,
Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”. David Strathairn – “Lincoln,” “Good Night, and
Good Luck.
But what if we made parlor games out of who would get
invited each year to the extent that we obsess around predicting the Oscars?
Wouldn’t that be fun for us? Well, I can certainly say it was fun for me when I
tried this exercise out for myself for the last 15 years.
I’m going to also operate under a few assumptions:
-An actor has to have at least appeared in a film in the past year before the Oscars.
-To squeeze the pressure on the process, 12 per year
-Breakout performances by people who were unknown before
will have a harder time getting in because the Academy would want to award
people who’ve been at it at least for a little while. At the same time, people
who are hot right now, either commercially, or just earned Oscar buzz but
didn’t make the cut, would also get strong consideration so there will be a
balance between these forces.
-Comedy doesn’t get rewarded at the Oscars so this will be a
way that the Academy would be to even the playing field.
-Actors who are successful in another medium like TV or
Broadway will get in a bit more immediately once they make a good film
-As with the Oscar nominations, your chances of getting in
will go up if you’re attached to a film that gets a lot of awards
-Child actors Hailie Steinfeld and Quevenzhane Wallis were
not invited to join the Academy after being nominated. This is probably because
they would need parental approval to even watch the other nominated movies and
attend Academy-sanctioned events, so I’m assuming the Academy would have a
preference for adults
-The Academy would have a need for international diversity
to an extent. It would be hard enough for a critical mass to gather around an
obscure film from, say, Bangladesh, but the kinds of international films that
make dents at the Oscars would gain advantage. After #oscarssowhite, I’m
assuming that there was a shift from international diversity to racial
diversity
I’ll show you one example of my picks:
2008:
Aaron Eckhart-Eckhart
broke out in the 1997 indie film In the Company of Men and had been more of a
B-list leading man (someone who might carry an off-beat film) than someone at
the top of the casting charts. This pick would be a response to Dark Knight
being the biggest hit of the year and spillover from a number of leading roles
in less successful films like Thank You for Smoking and No Reservations.
Ann Savage-An
87-year-old actress who dazzled in the 1945 film Detour before languishing in
obscurity and being rediscovered at a screening
of her film (literally: People didn’t know she was in attendance). She was cast
in the indie My Winnipeg.
Brendan Gleeson-Today,
Brendan Gleeson is a lot more visible considering his starring role in Mr.
Mercedes, his guest role in his kids’ series Frank of Ireland, his lead in the
dark morality tale Calvary, and his Oscar-nominated role in Banshees of
Inisherin. He had a string of memorable supporting roles but it’s arguable if
Cold Mountain or Gangs of New York would have caught the attention enough to
meet the threshold.
Dev Patel and Frida Pinto-I’m assuming that the Academy’s love for Slumdog Millionaire also includes a wake-up call that they have few South Asians among their ranks.
James Franco-It’s highly possible James Franco could have gotten earlier considering Spiderman was such a big sensation when it broke the $100 million mark in 2002 and he had a big presence in all three films. He also did headline his first film Annapolis in 2006, but 2008 is when he starred in Milk (garnering significant Oscar buzz) which was a BP nominee and showed off his comic (pot-smoking) side in Pineapple Express.
Mathieu Alarmic-Rose
to prominence the year before with The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (hello, indie
cred) and then was a Bond villain (ironically, in one of the franchise’s more
arty attempts with its en media res beginning and brooding pathos) so the
commercial box is checked as well.
Oliver Platt-Frost/Nixon
was a BP nominee that featured four character actors who had not been nominated.
Michael Sheen, Kevin Bacon, Oliver Platt, and Sam Rockwell. I’m assuming Bacon
(who has been acting since the 80s) would have made the cut by now. Although a
lot of people like to reverse engineer Sam Rockwell’s career since his Oscar
win to suggest he was always hot shit, he was more of a cult figure who was
consistently reliable but rarely on the top of the marquee. Sheen’s biggest
roles required him to be overshadowed by a bigger personality (Queen,
Frost/Nixon). Platt has been one of the Three Musketeers and headlined his own
TV show but has he ever had his day in the sun?
Karen Allen-Without checking IMDB, can you name the highlights of Karen Allen’s career outside Indiana Jones? It’s actually not a bad list: Starman, In the Bedroom, Malcolm X, National Lampoon’s Animal House, The Perfect Storm and the Sandlot, although these roles are all pretty small. Still, being a solid working actress for the preceeding 25 years combined with one certifiable pop culture icon as Marion Ravenwood is enough to get her in.
Shia LaBeouf-The
only disadvantage would have been youth in 2008. As the heir apparent to Indiana
Jones and the leading man of Transformers, LaBeouf was killing it commercially
and still made room for a number of smaller films like Eagle Eye, Disturbia,
Bobby, and a Guide to Recognizing Your Saints over the past three years.
Thandiwe Newton-Playing
Condolezza Rice in W. was a pretty high task even if it didn’t garner Oscar
nomination (that director Oliver Stone peaked between 1986 and 1991 all but
ensured that none of the actors from W. would never be considered). There wasn’t
as much of a push for racial diversity, but there was still some and she was
the female lead in Run Fatboy Run the year before and had appeared in the best
picture winner Crash. She'd go on to win an Emmy for Westworld.
Runners-Up: Scott Glenn, Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, Tina
Fey, Amy Poehler, Sam Rockwell, Michael Sheen, Omar Benson Miller
2009:
Danny McBride, Emily Blunt, James Gandolfini, James McAvoy, Joseph
Gordon-Leavitt, Maya Rudolph, Melanie Laurent, Michael Stuhlbarg, Melanie
Lynskey, Ryan Reynolds, Sam Rockwell, Zoe Saldana
Runners Up: Paula Patton, Rachel Harris, Daniel Bruehl, Dianne Kruger, Rachel McAdams, Bradley Cooper, Rosamund Pike
2010:
Andrew Garfield, Daniel Radcliffe, Dwayne the Rock Johnson,
Emma Watson, Emily Mortimer, Jason Schwartzman, Jon Hamm, Mila Kunis, Paul
Rudd, Rachel McAdams, Vincent Cassell, Zach Galifianakis
Runners-Up: Olivia Williams, Michael Cera, Patrick Wilson, Steve Carell
2011
Anthony Mackie, Armie Hammer, Beth Grant, Bradley Cooper,
Emma Stone, Jay Zhao, Justin Timberlake, Ian McShane, Kristen Wiig, Michael
Fassbender, Steve Carrell, Tom Hardy
Runners-Up: Olivia Wilde, Wendy McLoven-Coverly, Matt Lillard, Judy
Greer, Ed Helms, Missi Pyle, Rose Byrne, Chris Dowd
2012:
Anne Dowd, Amanda Seyfreid, Aubrey Plaza, Ben Whishaw, Eddie
Redmayne, Jason Schwartzman, John Ortiz, Kerry Washington, Martin Freeman,
Matthew McConaughey, Rashida Jones, Suraja Sharma
Runners-Up: Billy Connolly, Andrew Sachs, Kyle Chandler, Carmen Ejogo
2013:
Benedict Cumberbatch, Channing Tatum, Daniel Bruehl, David
Oyelowo, David Warhofsky, Dwight Henry, Jennifer Garner, Lake Bell, Margo
Martindale, Michael B Jordan, Michael Kelly, Simon Pegg, Steve Coogan
Runners-Up: Idris Elba, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher, Sarah Paulson,
Charlie Day, Burn Gorman, Jason Sudeikis, Will Forte, Kathryn Hahn, Greta
Gerwig, Sharlito Copely
2014:
Chris Rock, Chris Pratt, Gugu Mbuthu-Raw, Kim Dickens,
Lindsey Duncan, Neil Patrick Harris, Oscar Isaac, Peter Dinklage, Riz Ahmed,
Rene Russo, Scoot McNairy, Timothy Spall
Runners-Up: Kristen Stewart, Charles Dance, Matthew Goode, Paddy Considine, Sienna Miller, Jeremy Strong, Merritt Weaver
2015-2022
I'm going to keep this part of the list under wraps for now because I want to either invite guests or submit this elsewhere
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