And this time... IT'S PERSONAL!!!

As every so-called Oscar expert has pointed out ad infinitum, this year’s Best Actress race is a “grudge re-match” between Hilary Swank and Annette Bening (there will be audible gasps if Imelda Staunton wins – my main reason for betting against her is that despite what you might think, the Academy actually doesn’t like British actresses (South Africans and Australians are okay); witness Helen Hunt’s and Marisa Tomei’s victories as the lone Americans in their categories – and you have to go back to 1992 to find the last time a Brit won Best Actress, and 1973 before that).

As if the trumped up catfight weren’t an interesting enough narrative for these "journalistic" charlatans, they keep trying to sell the erroneous story that Swank was the underdog in the 1999 bout. Every time I read that, it makes me want to throw my computer out the window (it’s a good thing I don’t, or I’d have had to buy at least twenty-five new laptops by now). Where do people get the idea that Swank was such a long shot for Boys Don’t Cry? Granted, Bening’s last-minute SAG upset (and that was the real upset that year) threw many Oscar prognosticators off (including yours truly – remember though, this was the year after the Screen Actors were the only major signifiers of Roberto Benigni’s Oscar win (no offense, Las Vegas Film Critics)) and American Beauty had momentum, but just compare the two actresses’ precursor award wins (not counting nominations, film festival awards, breakthrough performance awards or ensemble mentions):

In Bening’s corner:
American Comedy Awards (Swank not eligible)
BAFTA (awarded after the Oscars; Swank not nominated until next year)
London Critics Circle Film Awards (Swank not nominated until next year)
San Diego Film Critics Society Awards
SAG

In Swank’s corner:
Boston Society of Film Critics Awards
Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards
Chicago Film Critics Association Awards
Chlotrudis Awards
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Awards
Florida Film Critics Circle Awards
Golden Globes
Golden Satellite Awards
Independent Spirit Awards (Bening not eligible)
Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards
New York Film Critics Circle Awards
Santa Fe Film Critics Circle Awards
Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards
Toronto Film Critics Association Awards

By my count, that’s five rounds awarded to Bening compared to 15 rounds awarded to Swank. And three of Bening’s wins were in contests that Swank couldn’t compete in, while only one of Swank’s was in an exclusive race. On top of that, when Boys Don’t Cry was released in October of that year, all the buzz was that Swank had an Oscar in the bag.

In what world does that make her win a "shocking upset"?

Now that I’ve got that rant off my chest, back to this year’s contest.

So even with all the grudge match talk, everyone’s pretty much accepted that Hilary Swank is going to win again this year. She’s in the drama, she made a physical transformation, she’s in the movie with the Oscar momentum, people have seen her movie (whereas Being Julia has made even less money than Boys Don’t Cry had at this point), she’s on magazine covers. Yes, everyone agrees that she’s going to get yet another chance to make a joke about how she forgot to thank her husband last time. Except me. I’m still not convinced. For the same reason I was hesitant to predict twin nominations for Jamie Foxx (and look how that turned out): I just don’t feel she has the pedigree to pull off this rare Oscar feat.

So, as usual, I did some research. I was surprised to find that winning two Oscars for leading performances (for the purposes of this post, I’m only looking at actors who won two statues in the lead categories – not one in lead and one in supporting) actually isn’t as rare as I thought. It’s been done by seven men and eleven women.

Of the men, all had earned at least one nomination prior to their first wins, and only the back-to-backers (Spencer Tracy and Tom Hanks) didn’t pick up additional nominations between their two wins.

On the female front, six had earned at least one nomination prior to their first wins. Two of the actresses who won on their first at-bats (Katharine Hepburn and Glenda Jackson) were nominated again before their second wins (Hepburn eight times, Jackson once).

That leaves just three precedents for Swank to pin her hopes on: Luise Rainer, Vivien Leigh and Sally Field. As an interesting side note, none of these actresses were ever nominated again after their second nomination/win.

The actress whose career seems most similar to Swank’s is Field (though I can’t really compare since I was only four when she won her last Oscar). Both got their starts on mediocre TV shows (Field on Gidget and The Flying Nun; Swank on Camp Wilder, Growing Pains and Beverly Hills 90210 (not really mediocre, but for the sake of argument…)), both did time with Burt Reynolds (Field in Smokey and the Bandit I & II, The End, Hooper and real life; Swank on a season of Evening Shade) and both followed up their first Academy Award winning roles with crappy disaster movies (Field in Beyond the Poseidon Adventure; Swank in The Core). Finally, like Field, Swank’s two nominations come five years apart. However, Field was eight years older than Swank when she won her second Oscar and was (from what I gather) a considerably bigger star. Swank better just hope that the Academy really likes her.

So what about Bening? In some ways, she’s swapped positions with 1999 Hilary Swank (especially if you believe that Swank was an underdog back then). She was being called a sure thing back when her little indie movie was released in October and she’s the only nominee from her film (Swank was one of only two from Boys Don’t Cry back when Bening was part of the American Beauty behemoth). Like Boys Don’t Cry, Being Julia is principally talked about only in terms of the lead actress’ tour-de-force performance (though Boys is a considerably more substantive film). However, Swank has again won the lion’s share of precursor awards this year.

If Swank’s best hope is the Sally Field precedent, then Bening’s is probably the Jessica Lange precedent. Their cases aren’t exactly analogous, but Lange’s is the one I keep coming back to. In 1994, Jodie Foster’s turn in Nell was showier than Lange’s in Blue Sky (I have to admit that I’ve never seen Blue Sky, but they don’t get much showier than Nell). Foster probably would’ve been a considerable threat (and would’ve stood an excellent chance of winning) if she hadn’t just won her second Oscar three years earlier. In fact, she beat Lange at the SAG Awards that year, most likely because those awards didn’t exist in 1991, so the playing field was more level. With Foster already a two-time winner at the age of 29, the path was clear for Lange at the Golden Globes and then the Academy Awards (where she’d “only” won a Supporting Actress Oscar, a dozen years ago), even in a movie that nobody had seen (it made less than either Boys Don’t Cry or Being Julia) and that nobody talked about outside of Lange’s performance. And as with Lange, there’s a sense that Bening is “owed” a Best Actress Oscar. So Bening is still in this two-woman race.

For now I’m leaning towards the underdog (Swank), but I could change my mind right before they tear open the envelope… just like I did in 1999.