Innholdsfortegnelse for Awards Special 1 February 2017 i The Hollywood Reporter

How do you separate the performance from the performer? It’s a question the Academy faces every year. And, each year, right up until the final Oscars are handed out, there’s no easy answer. Actors who go to great lengths to transform their physique — putting on weight as Robert De Niro did for Raging Bull, losing it as Matthew McConaughey did for Dallas Buyers Club — seem to be rewarded with an extra A for effort and for their extreme dedication to their craft. Similarly, actresses who surrender any sense of vanity — Halle Berry in Monster’s Ball, Charlize Theron in Monster — also have earned points for temporarily abandoning their status as glamour girls. But that’s only because audiences, and Oscar voters, have a sense of what those stars…

CASEY AFFLECK MANCHESTER BY THE SEA Roadside Attractions/Amazon Studios Affleck nabbed his second Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Lee, a bereaved handyman, in writer-director Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea. He talked with THR about why arguing with Lucas Hedges (who plays his nephew) was so much fun and how a fellow nominee’s movie made a big impact on him as a kid. What were your first conversations with Lonergan? They were practical and useful because it was about how Lee behaves in the scene, how he behaves with all the people he comes across, why he is acting a little bit strangely and how he sort of derails what otherwise would be normal human interactions. If he says to Michelle [Williams’] character, “There’s nothing there,” it’s not that.…

VIOLA DAVIS FENCES Paramount It’s fitting that Davis became the first African-American woman to receive three Oscar nominations, thanks to Fences. Starring with Denzel Washington, who also directed the adaptation of August Wilson’s play, Davis plays Rose, the emotional heart of a black family in the 1950s. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar spoke with the actress about the project for THR last fall. You also were directed by Denzel in Antwone Fisher. What kind of director is he? I see Denzel as an actor’s director, which is very rare, by the way. August Wilson once said that his plays offer white Americans a different way to look at black Americans. What do you think white Americans will get from the film? I think sometimes what people miss about black people is that we’re…

AWARDS SEASON 2017 ACTOR Denzel Washington Fences For playing the tragic blue-collar hero Troy Maxson, he won a Tony seven years ago. Having been nominated for every major accolade save a BAFTA, he pulled off an upset at the SAG Awards, which positions him to collect his third Oscar. Casey Affleck Manchester by the Sea The clear frontrunner for most of the season — he has won Globe, Critics’ Choice, Gotham, National Board of Review and other awards — his momentum hit a snag at the SAG Awards when he wasn’t called to the winner’s podium. Andrew Garfield Hacksaw Ridge His other movie, Martin Scorsese’s Silence, may not be a hit, but it underscored his versatility, helping the former Spider-Man further establish his serious actor chops in two very different…

ISABELLE HUPPERT French actress Isabelle Huppert is no stranger to the awards circuit — at least outside the U.S. She has won countless prizes, including two Cannes acting awards and a Cesar award, in a career that has spanned five decades and hundreds of movies and plays, including collaborations with such masters as Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Michael Cimino, Maurice Pialat and Michael Haneke. Thanks to her jarring turn in Paul Verhoeven’s controversial Elle, Huppert finally is getting the stateside recognition she deserves, including a Golden Globes win. On the way back from yet another film shoot, her 12th project in the past two years, Huppert spoke to THR about vying for her first Oscar. You’ve received dozens of awards over the years, but this is your first Academy Award…

Memorable moments from a storied history Almost 45 years after she climbed into the seat of a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun vehicle and smiled for photographers, Jane Fonda, now 79, still finds herself targeted by U.S. military veterans. The actress and activist, who took to the L.A. streets for the Women’s March to protest Donald Trump’s policies, already was one of Hollywood’s most outspoken opponents of the Vietnam War when, at 34, she made a two-week trip to Hanoi in July 1972. By then, more than 60,000 U.S. soldiers had lost their lives in the conflict; Vietnamese casualties were close to 1 million. In 2011, Fonda wrote on her website that the photo op — which earned her the nickname “Hanoi Jane” and incensed millions of Americans — came about…

This year’s nominees for the Academy Award for best sound mixing — the Oscar for those artists who both record sound live during filming and then later mix it with all other sound elements including effects and music during postproduction — created a broad range of work. And that includes a couple of “How’d they do that?” moments in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which gave 1977 Star Wars-era voices to two digitally created characters. In order to resurrect the late Peter Cushing’s character Grand Moff Tarkin, actor Guy Henry played the performance-captured role on set. “The majority of what you hear is Guy Henry; we didn’t have to manipulate it that much,” says Christopher Scarabosio, who is nominated alongside David Parker and Stuart Wilson for the film. “We…

MAHERSHALA ALI MOONLIGHT A24 Ali made waves in Hollywood on Jan. 29 with his tearful SAG Awards acceptance speech. In urging viewers to be more tolerant of people who are different than themselves, Ali commented on how his character tells a young gay boy “that he mattered, that he was OK.” Admits Ali, “I didn’t know what I was going to say, but when my name was called, I felt like it was important for me to share a couple of things that I learned from my experience working on Moonlight.” Although he’s only in the first third of Barry Jenkins’ adaptation of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, Ali has gained frontrunner Oscar status for the emotion he injected into Juan, a drug dealer who…