I can’t tell you how glad I am that I never have to watch that clip of Zoe Saldaña in Emilia Pérez ever again. The one in which she’s singing and dancing in that pant suit during an awards ceremony has been played ad infinitum during, well, awards ceremonies since her Oscar campaign quietly kicked off at Cannes Film Festival last year, where she was one of its three leads that won Best Actress. It’s an electric scene from a fine film––when I first saw it, I thought it was a sort of fabulous and semi-problematic, not a serious Best Picture contender–– but that was 10 months ago, and that film ballooned into something I doubt even the people who made it ever expected. Thankfully, it ended last night, with Saldaña winning an Oscar for it.
Part of that is down to word of mouth: audacious filmmaking, good or bad, gets people talking. But it also boils down to the fact that its distributor Netflix spent millions ensuring it would be a frontrunner this awards season. The stories were formed, the stylists were hired, the PJs were chartered. It entered last night’s Oscar ceremony as the most nominated foreign language film in the Academy’s history. And despite the wheels coming off at the last minute (thank you Karla Sofía Gascón, and your crazy, history-making tweets), it still managed to clinch Saldaña’s prize, and one for Best Original Song.
You might be wondering why some of the films we all loved didn’t make the cut this year. Where the fuck was Challengers, for example? Or Babygirl? Is the Academy comprised entirely of sex-shy purist virgins?
Whether the answer to that question is yes or no we don’t know, but what is true is that there’s a good reason for excellent films falling through the cracks and middling ones rising to the surface every year. Awards are never wholly merit-based, but nor can you buy them. Instead, making it all the way to the finish line at the Oscars relies on a canny mix of both.
For the actors themselves, the journey to a nomination, and hopefully a win, is reliant on a three things they can control. Sometimes, simply being great is not good enough: we, the hungry public––and the people who vote–– need something a little more shiny to laud. If you ever find yourself in the Oscar conversation, here’s how to make sure your win is watertight.
Figure out your story
Good Oscar contenders have a narrative, and for many actors, that propels them towards a win as much as the performance itself. Take Demi Moore, this year’s Best Actress frontrunner for The Substance, up until the final moment. Her story was laid out perfectly: an actor in her fifties, whose opportunities later in life––until this film––had been hampered by the perception that she wasn’t capable of being a serious actor. Once the highest earning female actor in Hollywood, she’d struggled to get seen for interesting work until The Substance‘s director, Coralie Fargeat, came calling. As Moore said in her Golden Globes speech: “Thirty years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a popcorn actress, and at that time, I made that mean that this [award] wasn’t something that I was allowed to have”. It’s her truth, but it also doubled up as a strong justification for your fellow actors to rectify the issue. It’s a frequently employed narrative technique: Brendan Fraser made his comeback in 2022’s The Whale, returning gloriously to a Hollywood that had wronged him. Matthew McConaughey’s win, as a cowboy living with AIDS in Dallas Buyers Club, marked his pivot towards grown-up cinema, after years of being dismissed as a romantic comedy king. Karla Sofia Gascon, cancelled or not, was the first openly transgender acting nominee, after making her name in telenovelas. All of these actors were tarred by expectations and defied them.
“You will be somewhere, at all times, for pretty much six months straight.”
Others thrive on familial ties. Isabella Rossellini was a first time nominee for Conclave; her mother, Ingrid Bergman, was a three-time winner, so a late-career win would have felt like a full circle moment. For Fernanda Torres, the star of I’m Still Here, she was the second Brazilian performer to earn a Best Actress nomination after her own mother, Fernanda Montenegro, for 1999’s Central Station. For Best Actor winner Adrien Brody, it was a coalescence of both that helped him win the prize for The Brutalist: he remains the youngest ever winner of the same prize, for The Pianist in 2003 at the age of 29. In the two decades since, he’s not been nominated once, often appearing in subpar movies that didn’t light his spirit. This was his big comeback, with a film that had great familial importance to him: his family, too, had emigrated to America from Europe like his character in The Brutalist did. There were tendrils tying his character’s history and his own together.
With no story, only a great performance, it can be a much steeper hill to climb, but it’s not impossible: the Academy rewarded Emma Stone a second time around for her role in Poor Things. Kieran Culkin had no real story to tell for his work on A Real Pain, only that he briefly considered dropping out of the role to spend time with his family. The trick with both of these winners? They were omnipresent.
Be everywhere
Entering into the awards race comes with the unspoken pact that you have to really put in the work. No part of that is perhaps more laborious than the requirement that you are somewhere, at all times, for pretty much six months straight. From September through to March (or even earlier, if your film like Anora or The Substance premiered at Cannes in May), potential nominees spend most weekends at a series of cocktail parties, dinners and film festivals offering fake awards that were made up for the sole purpose of coaxing famous actors to come to town. Each one is called a “campaign spot” and each one is supposedly valuable.
To win an Oscar having skipped that arduous route completely, especially nowadays, is near impossible. It’s why actors in contention for these things do not make movies in winter. If you decide to make new art while promoting the old art, toiling away at your craft instead of turning up to a made-up magazine’s honourees dinner, you will be penalised for that. Voting members of the Academy pop up at every turn, and they have a question you’ve been asked 13 times before that week but have to answer politely. But don’t worry, it’s a blessing to do this! And if you endure it it pays dividends.
Sometimes, going off-piste works in your favour, but that can only get you so far. Timothée Chalamet’s entire awards campaign for A Complete Unknown overlapped with its press campaign, and they are two different things––the former about prestige, the latter wide visibility. Chalamet used the internet as his key tool, releasing videos that functioned as short films or art pieces, and visited college campuses while others did Actors on Actors. (The shoot for his next film, Marty Supreme, also overlapped with the awards push.) He might have won the SAG, but tradition prevailed on Oscars night with Adrien Brody’s win.
Get a great stylist
Haven’t you heard? There’s no point in hitting the awards circuit without a smart stylist. This is the era of method dressing, after all! Last year, we had nearly nine months of Barbie looks with Margot Robbie, right up to Oscars night. 2024/5’s season has given us much of the same. Ariana and Cynthia, for their performances in Wicked, regularly riffed on pink and green, light and dark, creating a contrast. But even in the more modest films, that connection between character and actor through clothes has been inescapable. Demi Moore’s final rush to the finish line was replete with subtle nods to the sense of duality and body horror present in The Substance, like her beady-eyed Dior dress at the DGAs, or her lace-up corseted Schiaparelli, reminiscent of the sewn-up spine of Elisabeth in the film. Timothée Chalamet’s entire press run for A Complete Unknown riffed off of Bob Dylan’s wardrobe in inspired ways. Looking good is easy, but having people talk about what you’re wearing in tandem with your performance and project is a win-win.
Or, you go down the opposite route, and use your clothes as a way to firmly differentiate you from the person you just played. Mikey Madison, Best Actress winner, was a raucous, foul-mouthed stripper in Anora, and then arrived on the red carpet to reaffirm how unlike her character she was. She swapped tinsel hair and lingerie for Hepburn-esque grace, beautifully cut gowns and up-dos. In doing so, intentional or not, it reaffirmed how much acting she was doing to capture the character. And in the end, it worked.