Scheming of the Lambs: Best Actor, 1991

The nominees for 1991’s Best Actor:

Warren Beatty, Bugsy

Robert De Niro, Cape Fear

Anthony Hopkins, The Silence of the Lambs

Nick Nolte, The Prince of Tides

Robin Williams, The Fisher King

How does one define Best Actor, supposedly meant for leading players? Usually it’s pretty easy, you know who the lead is. Warren Beatty plays Bugsy Siegel in Bugsy; it’s right there in the title! Nick Nolte is in every scene of The Prince of Tides, the movie follows his arc, easy. Robin Williams is more of a co-lead in The Fisher King: the first 20 minutes are all Jeff Bridges and we don’t witness Williams outside of Bridges’ POV until past the halfway point, but he and Bridges are unquestionably the two arcs we follow, of equal importance. Ditto Robert De Niro in Cape Fear, which appears to be Nick Nolte’s movie (what a year he had!), but it doesn’t take long for De Niro’s psychopathic Max Cady to take center stage - unquestionably the co-lead.

The one that people still debate, however, is Anthony Hopkins in his first go as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. The film follows Clarice Starling’s pursuit of serial killer Buffalo Bill, she comes to Lecter for consultation purposes. There was no doubt he was going to get nominated - when the movie premiered and Hopkins and Jodie Foster hit the red carpet for the 1990 Oscars, reporters even asked him if he felt like this was his dress rehearsal for the following Oscars - but until campaigning began in earnest in late Autumn, he was the favorite to win Best Supporting Actor - even the National Board of Review named him so!

But apparently Hopkins disagreed, convincing the studio publicists to push him for Lead. He went from odds-on favorite to presumed second banana: how could he possibly hope to win against the raw emotional nakedness of Nolte, who’d taken the Golden Globe and various critics’ prizes? Of course, we know now, Hopkins was unstoppable:

But was it category fraud? I say no. Starling is how we get to Lecter, and once we do, he has an arc of his own to follow, separate from hers: the slow manipulation of resources that will allow for his escape. And interactions with Lecter have their impact on Starling, too, both in her approach to the case and in how she sees herself. Hopkins is a Lead.

But should he have won? My rankings, from fifth to first:

King’s Queen: Best Supporting Actress, 1991

The nominees for the Best Supporting Actress of 1991:

Diane Ladd, Rambling Rose

Juliette Lewis, Cape Fear

Kate Nelligan, The Prince of Tides

Mercedes Ruehl, The Fisher King

Jessica Tandy, Fried Green Tomatoes

What a lineup! The only one from a Best Picture nominee is The Prince of Tides' Kate Nelligan as Nick Nolte's mother, but even though she had won some critics' awards - and would win the BAFTA Award in this category for the next year (again, those pesky release dates!) - her presence here is somewhat a surprise: all her other honors were for her performance in Frankie and Johnny. Jessica Tandy was enjoying a career renaissance following her Best Actress win for 1989's Driving Miss Daisy; fried Green Tomatoes gave her another Southern eccentric to play, the story's narrator. Then-17-year-old Juliette Lewis broke out in a big way as Nick Nolte and Jessica Lange's rebellious daughter in Martin Scorsese's Southern Grande Guignol Cape Fear. And of course, the great Diane Ladd, here for a third time for her matriarch in Rambling Rose.

But there was no beating The Fisher King's Mercedes Ruehl, she was having a moment. By 1991, she had already won acclaim for her performance in Married to the Mob and won the Tony Award for the original Broadway run of Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. With The Fisher King, she got a showcase role in a movie that topped the box office for two consecutive weeks, earning critical praise and critics' awards - hell, even though the Los Angeles Film Critics honored Life is Sweet's Jane Horrocks as the Best Supporting Actress of the year, they fudged placement and named Ruehl their Best Lead Actress - people were eager to award her! Eventually, the Academy got in on it:

My own rankings, from fifth to first:

A Drag: 1991, Part Four

Summer slips into Autumn at the 1991 multiplexes, with a legendary documentary, a hit for Terry Gilliam, and a backloaded September: