...and Jaye Davidson only got a Supporting Actor nomination? Jaye's performance was clearly more complex and difficult than Stephen's (although Stephen did a great job). It just seems so incongruous.
And while we're on the subject, why didn't Forest Whitaker get nominated for anything?
I think Rea was much better than Davidson. I dont see what was so complex about Davidson's performance in all honesty, I think Neil Jordan's writing deserves most of the credit than Davidson's acting, sure he did a great job of building up to the twist, but I never once forgot that I was watching an inexperienced actor act. His emotional scenes come across as forced in my opinion and not geniune.
Plus Rea had to carry the film from beginning to end and had a much harder job than Davidson in the sense that Davidson had the more flashy role and Rea had to capture your interest doing much less, but Rea carried the film from beginning to end and never once had a false moment in his acting.
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I think it's because Rea had the lead role and Davidson had the supporting role.
shareDavidson role was more of a gimmick then anything else. He was good but it was a gimmick. Rea was in that movie from beginning to end.
Put it down to the Miramax marketing campaign. Those boys are masters at marketing stuff for the Oscars. Harvey and co. are very good at it.
shareI agree. I believe they had to change or modify the campaigning rules for the Academy Awards because of the way they campaigned for Shakespeare in Love.
shareI'm guessing that most of the people making comments here have no idea what the difference is between being the lead role and what a supporting character is (hint: it doesn't have a thing at all to do with who gave the better performance, or gimmicks.)
The bad news is you have houseguests. There is no good news.
Rea had a lot of screentime and really was the heart of the film in a performance Andrew Sarris called 'one of the most brilliantly understated performances of recent years', and to be honest Davidson should count himself lucky he received any kind of awards recognition, though he did have some nice moments here and there.
shareAnd while we're on the subject, why didn't Forest Whitaker get nominated for anything?