Oscars 2014: When Will Leonardo DiCaprio Finally Win?
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| Leonardo DiCaprio |
After a stellar award season, the 86th Academy Awards are this weekend and
— by almost anyone’s measure — Matthew McConaughey has
a lock on the Best Actor Award.
Though this year has seen fierce competition from his co-nominees
Chiwetel Ejiofor, Christian Bale, Bruce Dern and Leonardo DiCaprio (more
on him in a minute), there’s been an undeniable groundswell of support for
McConaughey.
His role in Dallas Buyers Club certainly checks
all the boxes typical of an award-winning performance: he lost a dramatic
amount of weight for the role; he plays a real-life character who not only
suffers from a deadly illness, but also heroically fights a weighty cause for
others; and he’s already proven at other award ceremonies that he can hit a
humble, charming and funny acceptance speech out of the park. Few would be
surprised to see him snag the statue come Sunday night.
However, it’s often the case that Academy doesn’t necessarily
reward individual performances, but frequently gives awards to those who
probably should have won at some point in the past — but were
overlooked — or those who have a body of consistently stellar work.
That
explains why the McConnaissance — the transformation of McConaughey from
the shirtless rom-com star into a powerhouse actor who tackles challenging and
varied roles — has been such a big part of the pre-Oscar conversation.
McConaughey deserves the award, some say, not only because of Dallas
Buyers Club, but also because of his great recent roles in Mud, The
Paperboy, HBO’s True Detective and, funnily enough, The
Wolf of Wall Street.
But the buzz over McConaughey’s career transformation and award
chances raises a question: When will it be Leo’s turn?
When you look over his career, it’s astonishing to think that
DiCaprio — who has been acting in critically-acclaimed films for 20 years now —
has yet to win an Oscar. In fact, his nomination for The Wolf of Wall
Street marks only the fourth time he’s received a nod over the course
of many diverse performances.
When McConaughey fans discuss how the actor
has made a calculated choice to take on deep and challenging roles in recent
years, they tend to ignore the fact that DiCaprio has always taken
on such roles.
Over the years, DiCaprio has moved from genre to genre, skillfully
tackling romance (Titanic),
crime capers (Catch Me If You Can), and blockbusters (Inception).
He’s even done Shakespeare! From playing an abused stepson (This
Boy’s Life) to a young pyromaniac (Marvin’s Room) to atortured
undercover cop (The Departed) to a disenchanted
suburbanite in a broken marriage (Revolutionary Road), DiCaprio has made
an entire career out inhabiting gripping roles.
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