Is supporting acting a battleground?

Maybe in an effort to make things more spicy headed down the home stretch, there are a great deal of people who think Christian Bale and Melissa Leo will lose the Best Supporting Acting categories to Geoffrey Rush and Hailee Steinfeld, respectively. For the Actor, it's because Bale is judged as "not well-liked" for his infamous demeanor and Rush is part of a sweep. For the Actress, it's because Melissa Leo, instead of sticking to Paramount's Oscar campaign for the film, took out ads for herself in Hollywood trade papers. Pretty terrible ads.

I say -- no way. Even if Leo loses votes, where are they going to go? Adams? Steinfeld? Carter? The Best Supporting Actress race is, if anything, completely wide open apart from Leo's clear frontrunner status. The argument goes that True Grit is the next-most-well-liked movie, and ergo they'd want to vote for Steinfeld. But The Fighter is a tremendously well-liked movie -- three acting nominations, picture, director, screenplay, editing nominations.

For Bale to lose, there would have to be a huge momentum swing to Rush, which again I can't see happening because The Fighter is a movie with broad praise. Geoffrey Rush already won his Oscar back in 1996 for Shine. Bale has the "overdue" factor; a decade of shape-shifting, rigorous and unconventional performances should count for something.

Want some historical basis to not expect a big switcheroo in both supporting categories? By all means, I'm happy to oblige.


Last year, Christoph Waltz and Mo'Nique won the Critics Choice, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and Oscar. 2008 was strange because Kate Winslet won the Supporting Actress Golden Globe and SAG for a role that she would win Lead Actress for at the Oscars... so I'll skip that. 2007 had different actresses win the Critics Choice, Golden Globe, SAG, and Oscar. Javier Bardem won all four of those awards.
In 2006, Jennifer Hudson won all four of the major awards; Eddie Murphy won the Critics Choice, Golden Globe, and SAG, but lost the Oscar to Alan Arkin. Arkin, it should be noted, had never won; he hadn't even been nominated for almost 40 years.
In 2005, Paul Giamatti won the Critics Choice and the SAG, while George Clooney won the Golden Globe and the Oscar. Rachel Weisz lost the Critics Choice but won the Golden Globe, SAG and Oscar.
And finally, in 2004 Thomas Haden Church won the Critics Choice, Clive Owen won the Golden Globe, and Morgan Freeman won the SAG and the Oscar (it was his first win). Virginia Madsen won the Critics Choice, Natalie Portman won the Golden Globe, and Cate Blanchett won the SAG and the Oscar.

That gives us five years to work with. When someone wins all three major precursors, they only lost once. Alan Arkin's win in 2006, while surprising, certainly came from a desire to reward someone who was very overdue. The thing about this year is that there is no split, no head-scratcher. I expect other actors to win the BAFTA today because the British Academy tends to do its own thing, but there is zero evidence to see Rush or Steinfeld winning. If it happens, it won't be unprecedented, but it certainly breaks the mold.