Next Sunday, March 10, the 96th edition of the Oscar Awards organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will take place at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood in Los Angeles, California. An evening where the best films of 2023 will be highlighted in 23 categories.
One of those categories is Best Actor, which this year has five nominees, of which four are Americans and one is Irish. Among them:
Bradley Cooper
Born January 5, 1975 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he is an American actor, director and producer. His career in entertainment began in the late 1990s, debuting on television with the series Sex and the City but it was his work in the cinema that really stood out when in 2009 he participated in the film The Hangover.
Cooper has received multiple Academy Award nominations. Among his most notable films are Silver Linings Playbookfor which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor; American Sniper, which also earned him an Oscar nomination; and A Star is Bornwhere he not only acted, but also directed and produced the film, receiving critical acclaim and several Oscar nominations, including Best Actor and Best Picture.
On this occasion he is nominated in this category for his performance in the film Maestro. This film is a real-life love story that focuses on the relationship between Leonard Bernstein and his wife, Felicia Montealegre. A passionate, heartbreaking and stormy bond. The couple married in 1951 and were separated until Felicia’s death in 1976. However, Bernstein kept several secrets between them that he liked men and his wife knew it, but the love they felt for each other made them stay together, in yes, a love relationship beyond the physical.
Cillian Murphy
Born on May 25, 1976 in Douglas, Cork, Ireland, he is a film and theater actor recognized for participating in projects such as 28 Days Later, Peaky Blinders and recently the several times nominated Oppenheimer.
He is particularly known for his collaboration with director Christopher Nolan, appearing in several of his films, including Inception and the trilogy de The Dark Knightwith his interpretation of the villain Scarecrow
Cillian Murphy is known not only for his intensity on screen, but also for his meticulous approach and dedication to each role, choosing projects that challenge him and allow him to explore human complexity.
On this occasion, Murphy is nominated for an Oscar for the film Oppenheimer. Based on the book by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, this film is a biological thriller regarding J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who helped create humanity’s first nuclear weapons.
The film tries to do justice to the physicist’s immense intelligence and moral conflicts that came into play when he led the Manhattan Project and, years later, to post-World War II nuclear policy.
Born on November 28, 1969 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he is an American actor, playwright and director who has participated in Broadway productions such as Passing Strange y The Scottsboro Boysbeing nominated for several awards for his work.
In film, Domingo has proven to be equally talented, appearing in films such as Selma y If Beale Street Could Talk a film adaptation of the novel by James Baldwin.
He has also participated in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottomwhere he shared the screen with Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman.
For these awards, Colman Domingo is nominated for the production of Rustin . The film tells the story of a key man in the history of the United States but, for many years, his contribution was made invisible and ignored.
Rustin, an African American who was a figure in the civil rights movement and one of the organizers of the March on Washington in 1963, march in which Martin Luther King gave his famous speech I have a dream.
This openly gay activist was insulted, beaten and arrested, but this did not prevent him from being the true architect of the march, in which it is believed that a quarter of a million people participated.
Jeffrey Wright
Born on December 7, 1965 in Washington DC, United States, he is an actor known for his versatility and dedication, building a career in theater, film and television.
Wright began his career in the theater. Her interpretation in the work Angels in America by Tony Kushner, where he played Belize, a former nurse drag queen and activist for the rights of people with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), earned him a Tony Award in 1994 for Best Supporting Actor in a Play.
In film, Wright has participated in a wide range of projects. One of his most notable roles is as the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat in Basquiatdirected by Julian Schnabel.
Wright is also known for his work on the franchise of James Bond, where he plays Felix Leiter, Bond’s friend and ally. Additionally, he has had roles in films such as Syrian, The Hunger Games y Westworld.
He is currently nominated for best actor for the film American Fiction, a film based on the novel Erasure de Percival Everett. The film is regarding an African-American teacher and writer named Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, who lives a family drama that functions as satire.
The teacher is frustrated by his students, most of whom are white and who are too easily offended by the racially charged texts they are taught. While in Boston to attend a book festival, Monk discovers that her readings are poorly attended, but another writer with a catalog full of stereotypes manages to fill every room where she appears.
The film depicts Monk’s eccentric and dysfunctional family and frustration at the hypocrisy of the publishing industry that sells the pain of African Americans to white people and minimizes authors into smaller and smaller boxes.
Paul Giamatti
He was born on June 6, 1967 in New Haven, Connecticut. He is an American actor known for his ability to play a wide range of characters, from comedic to dramatic.
Giamatti began his career with roles in theater productions and television appearances before making his film debut in the mid-1990s.
He first came to prominence in supporting roles in films such as Private Parts y Saving Private Ryanbut it was his role in American Splendor which catapulted the actor to international fame. In this film, Giamatti played the irascible comic book author Harvey Pekar, earning praise for his authentic and nuanced performance.
The success continued with Sideways, a comedy-drama directed by Alexander Payne, where the actor played a depressed writer and wine aficionado. Although he surprisingly did not receive an Oscar nomination for this role, his performance was universally praised.
He has appeared in a variety of films such as Cinderella Man, for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, The Illusionist y Barney’s Versionfor which he won a Golden Globe.
On this occasion he participates in the Best Actor category for the film Those who remaina film in which Paul Hunham plays a professor, at times angry and frustrated, who belongs to an educational institution full of prestige in the United States.
He is forced to spend the Christmas holidays at the educational center to look following the students who have nowhere else to go. This coexistence will force him to form an incredible bond with one of the students, a problematic but intelligent boy, with whom he will explore his own past traumas.
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