Was there any beating Benicio del Toro for Best Supporting Actor?
Realistically, probably not. From the moment people started seeing Traffic, the name was on the trophy, with critics like Kenneth Turan immediately singling him out as the film's best performance. Come awards time, he collected a haul of hosannas from the Golden Globes, BAFTAs, LA Film Critics, National Society of Film Critics, and the Screen Actors Guild. His SAG win was particularly miraculous, considering they bumped him up to the Lead Actor category, suggesting that the industry was eager to award that performance no matter where it was placed (it's also indicative of the lack of a real frontrunner in Lead Actor throughout the season).
As tends to be the case with Best Supporting Actor, the Oscar Five was a done deal for a while. The BAFTAs nominated Billy Elliot's Gary Lewis and Gladiator's Oliver Reed, but those were very British decisions: Lewis's performance wasn't a standout here the way young discovery Jamie Bell or previous Oscar nominee Julie Walters were, while, as Inside Oscar 2 describes it, the idea of anyone else nominating Reed, who died during that film's production and whose performance was "completed" with the use of CGI, was too morbid to consider. Some critics' groups, including NYFCC and NSFC, made mention of Fred Willard's hilarious turn in Best in Show, but always as an also-ran, not the winner. And The Contender's villain Gary Oldman filled the SAG slot left vacant by Del Toro's promotion, but his public feud with the film's director Rod Lurie and distributor DreamWorks, plus his reported insistence that he campaign as Lead, left a sour taste in many Academy members' mouths, even if the performance is that film's best.
So no, there was no disrupting the quintet of Del Toro, Oldman's co-star Jeff Bridges, surprise possible upset Willem Dafoe of Shadow of the Vampire, early favorite Albert Finney of Erin Brockovich, and the acclaimed Joaquin Phoenix of Gladiator. And there was no disrupting Del Toro's march to Oscar victory:
Here's how I'd rank them, had I a ballot:
