Robert Downey Jr. won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Christopher Nolan’s movie “Oppenheimer.” Downey remarked as he accepted his medal, “I want to thank the Academy and my horrible childhood, in that order.”
This is Downey’s third nominee and first Oscar victory. It’s an odd victory that draws attention to the shortcomings of the Academy’s two supporting positions.
Undoubtedly, Downey gives an outstanding depiction as Oppenheimer, showcasing his nervous and volatile charm. Still, Downey’s Oppenheimer sequence is maybe the least important in the whole movie.
The narrative revolves around Downey’s character Lewis Strauss, a bureaucrat, and his attempts to secure Senate approval for his selection as Commerce secretary, which comes decades after the atomic bomb was built. The Strauss sections of Oppenheimer have thematic significance, but they don’t have nearly as much punch as the epic, tragic tale of Oppenheimer creating the bomb.
Robert Downey Jr.’s Oscar History
| Category | Data |
|---|---|
| Robert Downey Jr.’s Oscar Win | Won Best Supporting Actor for his role in “Oppenheimer” |
| Downey’s Previous Oscar Nominations | 2, for “Tropic Thunder” and “Chaplin” |
| Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s Oscar Win | Won Best Supporting Actress for her role in “The Holdovers” |
| Definition of Supporting Categories | Difficult to define, prone to being contested |
| Academy’s Official Regulations for Supporting Categories | Performers can enter the competition in either the lead or supporting categories, and voters in the Academy’s Acting Branch can decide where each performance belongs |
| Category Fraud | Studios putting performers who are obviously in lead roles into the Oscars under the Supporting category to increase their chances of winning |
| Examples of Category Fraud | “The Favourite” (2018), “Fences” (2016) |
| Examples of Short Screen Time Wins | Hermione Baddeley in “Room at the Top” (1959), Beatrice Straight in “Network” (1977), Judi Dench in “Shakespeare in Love” (1999) |
| Viola Davis’s Performance in “Doubt” | Nominated for Best Actress despite only appearing in the film for approximately eight minutes |
| Impact of Brief Screen Time | Less important than the type of impression an actor can make to further a larger narrative |
Performance Excellence vs. Narrative Advancement
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, tonight’s winner of Best Supporting Actress, is in a similar dilemma. In The Holdovers, Randolph plays Mary, the chef at a boarding school, and she defies the plot to the fullest. Despite being the least developed of the three main characters in the movie, Mary is painfully humanized by Randolph just by virtue of her simple presence.
These two victories serve as a kind of case study. They represent the following query: Do the Best Supporting categories just honor performance excellence without considering anything else? Or do they give credits to acts based on how successfully they advance a main narrative? The Academy has never been able to agree on a response to such query in the past.
Supporting Categories
The Supporting categories are difficult to define and prone to being contested, therefore this is Downey’s second slightly contentious nomination in the category. (He was nominated in 2009 for Tropic Thunder, a film in which he wore blackface.
Even the Oscars’ design includes some uncertainty. According to the Academy’s official regulations, any performer may enter the competition in either the lead or supporting categories, and voters in the Academy’s Acting Branch can decide where each performance belongs.
This uncertainty makes the Supporting categories especially vulnerable to category fraud, which occurs when studios put performers who are obviously in lead roles into the Oscars under the Supporting category in order to increase their chances of winning.
In 2018, The Favourite had three starring actresses, but to prevent dividing votes, the studio submitted Olivia Colman as Best Actress and Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz as the best supporting actress.
(To be fair, Colman did not have an Oscar at the time, but Stone and Weisz did. Colman won hers that year after her co-stars cleared the way.)
In 2016, Fences was a two-hander with screentime almost evenly shared between Viola Davis and Denzel Washington, however Washington was nominated for Best Actor, while Davis for Best Supporting Actress.
On the opposite end of the scale, some Best Supporting candidates scarcely appear in the film for which they win. In 1959, Hermione Baddeley was nominated for only two minutes of screentime in Room at the Top, while Beatrice Straight won for six minutes in Network in 1977.
Judi Dench notoriously won Best Supporting Actress in 1999 for her eight-minute performance as Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare in Love. “I feel for eight minutes on the screen, I should only get a little bit of him,” Dench joked about the Oscar during her victory speech.
Examining the Impact of Brief Screen Time
The screentime disputes are especially enlightening when we consider the situations when they do not arise. Viola Davis, like Dench in Shakespeare in Love, appears in Doubt (2008) for barely approximately eight minutes.
However, Davis’ portrayal is so captivating, so indicative of the shades of ambiguity and moral compromise that make Doubt work, that no one protested when she was nominated for Best Actress. Her work in Doubt is still regarded as one of the greatest small-scale performances.
The fact that Dench’s eight-minute win is more fondly remembered as one of those Harvey Weinstein schemes than as a triumph, despite Davis’s eight-minute nomination, suggests that audiences are more interested in the impact that supporting actors can make than in the duration of their on-screen time.
Less screentime matters in this strange, confusing area than the type of impression you may create to further a larger narrative.
In The Holdovers, Randolph passes the test, but in Oppenheimer, Downey may have failed. Even though it has been 16 years since I last watched Doubt, I can still picture Davis averting her gaze while she thought about how to handle her son’s dubious relationship with a priest.
Despite Downey’s technically flawless portrayal of Strauss, after seeing Oppenheimer for a few weeks, I had forgotten the most of his voiceovers.
A Marvelous Legacy and the Strangeness of Oscar Wins
Downey is a superb performer. His massive presence shone a spotlight on everything that made the Marvel Cinematic Universe possible—and, for a little while, exhilarating. He is equally capable of focusing that brightness into the intense concentration of a performance, such as the one he gave with Less Than Zero in 1987.
He is a brilliant genius who ought to get an Oscar. The fact that he won an Oscar for this performance in particular seems like something that will seem strange in ten years.
