Early 2016 Oscar Predictions: First Look at Best Supporting Actor

Some were wondering where the performers in Quentin Tarantino‘s The Hateful Eight were when I posted my early Best Actor predictions. Well, it’s often tough to tell just who will be considered a lead and who will be considered supporting in a Tarantino feature, and considering this film is a massive ensemble piece it’s possible the entire cast will be supporting, or at least that’s how I’m looking at it until we know otherwise as I bring you my first look at a field of 26 contenders in the Best Supporting Actor category.

Truth be told, it’s still too early to really open the doors on the supporting categories as these are quite often the performances we don’t see coming. With lead performances it’s much easier to predict which ones are more likely to knock our socks off (or, at the very least stand out in the eyes of the Academy), but with some supporting performances, actors are allowed to let loose, bringing life to a character that eventually steals the show. With that in mind, let’s see how things are shaking out this early in the game.

At the top of the heap I have Michael Keaton in Spotlight, a performance that very likely may find its way in the lead category once all is said and done. The film sounds like a doozy, written and directed by Thomas McCarthy and centering on the Boston Globe’s Spotlight Team that, in 2001, began reporting on the covering up of sexual abuse of countless children by cardinals and bishops in the Boston Catholic Archdiocese (read more on it here). Keaton stars alongside Liev Schreiber, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams and Stanley Tucci and there’s no telling just which one of them will standout, but if Keaton blows us away like he did with Birdman last year, perhaps he’ll get that statue that alluded him less than a year ago.

Next on the list, and one I had a hard time keeping off the top line, is Tom Hardy in The Revenant. I have no idea what director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has planned for us with this film, but the shoot sounds like it may have been a nightmare and those are the kinds of conditions within which I believe Hardy thrives. We’ve already read about the Mad Max: Fury Road shoot and even recently learned more about what Hardy was dealing with when it came to Nicolas Winding Refn‘s Bronson (read that here), and now we sit and wait to see what’s in store for us with this one and the suspense is killing me.

The only performance in my top five that has actually been seen is that of Harvey Keitel‘s in Youth as he and Michael Caine appear to have delivered two of the best performances at the Cannes Film Festival this year. Keitel has been nominated only once before, that being for Bugsy back in 1992.

Then we come to our first Hateful Eight performer and I was originally going to go with Kurt Russell, but I just feel it’s about time Samuel L. Jackson gets a second nomination, more or less as a reward for how many times he’s blown us away and gone unrecognized. Jackson has only been nominated once before, that for his performance in Pulp Fiction, but Tarantino has been giving this guy such great material for his entire career and he has delivered every time out, it’s about time we add another nom to his list of accomplishments.

And finally, I guess this is the Jonah Hill slot only this time instead of Hill it’s going to his pot-smoking-comedic-buddy-turned-serious-actor, Seth Rogen, as he plays Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak in Steve Jobs. If anything Rogen will benefit, as did Hill, from an Aaron Sorkin screenplay, and who knows, he might show us there’s more to him than a constant barrage of marijuana jokes.

There are plenty more contenders that could find their way into the top five and you can click here for my full field of 26 contenders, but before that here is my ordered top five once again.