Twitter

There are so many factors that go into why an individual wins an Academy Award. For actors (and certain directors), something that comes up often is the perception that someone is “due.” Or, even better, “overdue.” The Academy Awards honor actors and directors with multiple awards across their careers, yes, but throughout their decades-long history, the Academy has proved to be pretty stingy about handing out second (or third, or fourth) Oscars.

Very often, not having won an Oscar already is one of the biggest reasons to win an Oscar. Al Pacino was good (and loud and bombastic) in Scent of a Woman, but would he have won the Oscar over Denzel Washington in Malcolm X if he hadn’t gone decades without winning an Oscar? Doubtful. Sometimes, a performer or director wins an Oscar because of the goodwill they’ve amassed over an entire career (Martin Scorsese winning for The Departed in 2006). Other times, someone who’s been nominated a bunch of times recently will find it to be his or her “turn” (Renee Zellweger winning for Cold Mountain after two straight losses). This isn’t always the Academy operating with intention. It’s just the direction in which the buzz goes. The “he’s/she’s due!” factor should never be underestimated when it comes to writing Oscar narratives.

…So who’s got it this year?

Due For a Nomination (Just ONE Nomination)

There is a fine line between making a “they’re due” argument for an actor who’s never been nominated before and being that kind of guy who bets against the Harlem Globetrotters because the Generals were due.

But it’s true that many of these longstanding actors with resilient careers who were just never smiled upon by the Oscar voters before DO end up getting their moment sometimes. Just look at Jennifer Jason Leigh’s nomination for The Hateful Eight last year. She spent the entire 1990s seeing critically acclaimed performance after critically acclaimed performance get bupkis from the Academy. Then last year, playing an unlikeable, bloodied-up, foul-mouthed criminal for Quentin Tarantino, it all came together, and a big part of that was this idea that she could finally be honored for her career.

So who’s due for that first-ever nomination this year? How about someone like Hugh Grant, who has most certainly had a notable career — from Brit import sensation to rom-rom champion to tabloid scandal to modest comeback kid though nothing like the leading man he once was — full of memorable performances, from Four Weddings and a Funeral to Love Actually to About a Boy, all of which were Oscar-y or Oscar-adjacent. This year, he gave a lovely little performance opposite Meryl Streep in Florence Foster Jenkins. He’ll be campaigned as a supporting actor, though there’s a chance the Golden Globes will throw him into the Lead Actor in a Comedy category. The husband-of-Meryl-Streep role has strangely never been a winner with Oscar; zero nominations in her whole career for actors playing Mr. Streep. The last time anyone even husband-adjacent to Streep got nominated was Jack Nicholson in Ironweed in 1987. So Grant would be bucking a trend here, it’s true.

How about Andrew Garfield, then? He certainly doesn’t have the career longevity of an actor who could make the “he’s due” claim. What he does have is a recent near-miss of a nomination, when he likely ended up sixth on a five-man Supporting Actor ballot for The Social Network in 2010. Garfield has two performances that could get him attention this year: as a conscientious-objector in the Army in Hacksaw Ridge and as a Jesuit priest in Martin Scorsese’s Silence. He’s also recently freed up from The Amazing Spider-Man, and his lady Emma Stone is currently the Best Actress front-runner, so there are some intangibles on his side as well.

Big Careers, Little Oscar Love

The thing about the notion that Michael Keaton is due for an Oscar is that two years ago, he was never thought of as an Oscars kind of actor. His performance in Birdman (and the nature of that role, if you ask me) changed that whole conversation, and between coming within a hair’s breadth of winning Best Actor that year and the fact that he followed it p by playing the lead in yet another Best Picture winner in Spotlight suddenly give Keaton that “he’s due” momentum. At the moment, buzz on his upcoming movie The Founder has gone quiet, and its December 16th opening weekend has it competing with a whole boatload of big movies. But Best Actor is still pretty lean this year, so it could happen.

It’s maybe tough to imagine now, but when Liam Neeson was nominated for Best Actor in Schindler’s List, it seemed like we were seeing the dawn of the next great actor. Surely there would be many Oscar nominations to come. But Neeson’s career has gone to some interesting places, and the closest he’s come to a nomination since Schindler was for 2004’s Kinsey, which snagged him Globe and Spirit nominations but nothing from the Academy. Still, even with a career that’s become more known for revenge thrillers than biopics in the last decade, Neeson’s career has garnered a lot of respect. If he’s good (and in a big enough role) in Scorsese’s Silence, he’s got the kind of career that voters would reward.

Directors For Whom “It’s Time”

While there is a crop of directors who have been Oscar-nominated three times yet have never won — David O. Russell, Alexander Payne, Ridley Scott — none of them have movie out this year. Instead, the drumbeat of “they’re due” sounds more like the drumbeat of “it’s time.” That is to say, there are directors who have worked just outside the Oscar inner circle for a little bit now, and it seems like they might be on the cusp of Academy recognition. This isn’t a unique phenomenon. Look at the above names. Alexander Payne had been making critically acclaimed movies like Citizen Ruth and Election and About Schmidt for years, and with each one, he nudged a little bit closer to Oscar. No nominations for Ruth. Screenplay nomination for Election. Two acting nominations for Schmidt. Then Sideways came, and suddenly Academy voters couldn’t say away from him.

Two names in the Best Director competition jump out for this kind of treatment. Denis Villeneuve got a Foreign Language Film nomination in 2010 for Incendies, but as for his English-language output: his psychological-thriller art film Enemy got nothing; Prisoners received a lone Best Cinematography nomination, and last year’s Sicario got three nominations (Cinematography, Score, and Sound Editing). He’s moving up that ladder, and with Arrival about to premiere as his best film to date, there’s a chance he might be able to finally crack into that top echelon.

By contrast, Jeff Nichols has never seen a film of his get Oscar attention of any kind. But his movies Mud and Take Shelter were both in the awards conversation in their respective years, often in the “should be nominated but won’t” conversations. With Loving, however, Nichols brings his on-the-rise reputation to an Oscar-friendly subject matter, a true story of great social import.

But of course, this year, when you’re talking about who’s due for an Oscar, you’re talking about the actresses. Four in particular come to mind.

Viola Davis

Previous nominations (2): Doubt (Supporting Actress, 2008); The Help (Lead Actress, 2011)

This year contending with: Fences, the adaptation of the August Wilson play for which Davis won the Tony Award in 2010.

Viola Davis’s big “she’s due” claim isn’t that she’s been nominated so many times, it’s the perception that she came so close to winning for The Help. Meryl Streep took that Oscar for her performance in The Iron Lady, but Viola was seen as a close second, having won the SAG Award that year. Since then, she’s won an Emmy and two more SAG Awards, all for her role on TV’s How to Get Away With Murder. It’s time for everybody to remember that she’s a movie star first and foremost. And with the recent announcement that she’ll be campaigned as a supporting actress, it’s looking very likely that she’ll get her due next February.

Michelle Williams

Previous nominations (3): Brokeback Mountain (Supporting Actress, 2005); Blue Valentine (Lead Actress, 2010); My Week With Marilyn (Lead Actress, 2011)

This year contending with: Manchester By the Sea, in which Michelle has a small but pivotal role that grants her one very big spotlight scene.

Before Viola Davis was bumped down to supporting, the Supporting Actress award seemed to be within Michelle Williams’ grasp. Now she’s running a clear second-place. No one has really ever spoken about Williams in the context of being due for an Oscar, mostly because she’s so young. The same went for Kate Winslet early on. But once you hit that fourth nomination without a win, people start noticing. If Williams does indeed snag a nomination for Manchester but doesn’t win, look for that narrative to kick in for her the next time she’s in something even vaguely Oscar-y.

Annette Bening

Previous nominations (4): The Grifters (Supporting Actress, 1990); American Beauty (Lead Actress, 1999); Being Julia (Lead Actress, 2004); The Kids Are All Right (Lead Actress, 2010)

This year contending with: 20th Century Women, where she plays a single mother looking to raise her son in the late 1970s with the help of a mismatched crew of boarders and family friends.

Bening’s occasional boogeyman — Hilary Swank, who beat Bening to the statue in ’99 and ’04 — isn’t present in the race this year. But Natalie Portman, who won Best Actress over Bening in 2010, sure is! If Portman beats Bening twice, all eyes immediately go to Whoopi Goldberg to see what comeback project she’ll use to beat Bening to her second Oscar. Looking backwards, I wonder if Oscar voters would have given it to her in the seemingly very close 1999 race, knowing they’d be able to make it up to Swank five years later. Regardless, that’s not how these things work; each year is its own story. A fifth nomination without a win would put Bening up there with Irene Dunne, who also went 0-for-5, and one behind Deborah Kerr and Glenn Close, the Oscars’ benchmark for thwarted actressy glory.

Amy Adams

Previous nominations (5): Junebug (Supporting Actress, 2005); Doubt (Supporting Actress, 2008); The Fighter (Supporting Actress, 2010); The Master (Supporting Actress, 2012); American Hustle (Lead Actress, 2013)

This year contending with: Arrival, where she plays a linguist sent to make first contact with a just-descended race of extraterrestrials.

That premise may seem overly sci-fi for Oscar’s tastes, and it might be, but the role offers Adams an unexpectedly deep well of emotions to play, which is why I think she stands a chance. Of a nomination, at least. The top of the category, with Emma Stone and Natalie Portman duking it out, is almost certainly too competitive for Adams to prevail. She’ll be on the cusp of getting a nomination, out there with Ruth Negga (Loving) and Isabelle Huppert (Elle) and Meryl Streep (Florence Foster Jenkins). So it’s only a question of whether Amy Adams becomes a 6-time Oscar nominee without a win by the time she’s gunning for her next one.