Brendan Fraser might be the first Canadian to ever win a Best Actor Oscar for The Whale on Sunday. We haven't made that out to be too big of a deal. We are willing to admit that was a mistake, rare as it might be.
We did mention Fraser's nomination in our Academy Awards preview. We devoted more space to Sarah Polley's well deserved nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay and snub for Best Director. Polley earned her space in our preview but we could have devoted more to Fraser's nomination.
The Whale, like Women Talking, is not a Canadian film. No doubt, no dispute unlike Women Talking.
Brendan Fraser has been around for a long time. We joke about secretly Canadian. Brendan Fraser was definitely secretly Canadian.
Most Canadians who received Oscars nominations fit the classic definition: born in Canada, grew up in Canada. Meg Tilly and Jennifer Tilly, both of whom have received Best Supporting Actress nominations, have a Canadian mother and were born in the United States. The Tilly sisters did spend a significant amount of their childhood in Canada.
Anna Paquin, the only human alive with an acting Oscar who was born in Canada, identified more as someone from New Zealand when she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for The Piano in 1994.
Fraser was born to Canadian parents in the United States and bounced around many places during his childhood. he did go to a boarding school in Toronto. His father worked for the Canadian government. George Genereux (maternal uncle) was the only Canadian to win a gold medal (men's trap) in the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, Finland.
The members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, as stereotypes go, love actors who go through a physical transformation in a dramatic role. Think Charlize Theron in Monster and Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club, the latter directed by Canadian filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallée.
The Academy members also root for fallen actors who turned their lives around, as Fraser has done.
Fraser has some tough competition for Best Actor: Austin Butler (Elvis), Colin Farrell (The Banshees of Inisherin), Bill Nighy (Living), and Paul Mescal (Aftersun). I liked Mescal in Aftersun, a wonderful, quiet film. Butler might be the most significant barrier between Fraser and the Oscar.
Fraser has won the Best Actor category to win a Critics Choice Movie award and a Screen Actors Guild award. He was nominated for a Golden Globe award and BAFTA Film award but lost those awards. The Academy Award nomination is pending.
Darren Aronofsky, known for brilliant directing for Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan, did a wonderful job in directing The Whale.
Sarah Polley gets Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay but not Best Director
Women Talking wins Robert Altman Award at the 2023 Independent Spirit Awards
2023 Canadian Screen Awards nominations: Television
Male Canadians received 6 Academy Award Best Actor nominations from 1936-1944. Walter Huston and Walter Pidgeon had 2 nominations each with Raymond Massey and Alexander Knox each having a single nominations. Ryan Gosling is the only Canadian actor with nominations in this category since the end of World War II: Half Nelson (2006) and La La Land (2016). Well, until Brendan Fraser.
The late Christopher Plummer, who is up for a Canadian Screen Award in 2023 for Best Supporting Performer, Drama for Departure, was the last Canadian actor to receive an Oscar nomination in 2017 for All the Money in the World for Best Supporting Actor. Plummer won the Oscar in the same category in 2011 for Beginners.
Donald Sutherland, who has never had an Academy Award nomination, did receive an Academy Honorary Award in 2017.
Dan Levy joins the list of Canadians who have hosted Saturday Night Live
We also updated our look at the Canadians who hosted Saturday Night Live to include Brendan Fraser. Austin Butler would have been 6 and 7 years old when Fraser hosted the NBC show in the late 1990s (October 18, 1997 and February 13, 1999). Can imagine Lorne Michaels bringing Fraser back to host the show with an Academy Award.
While few Canadians have ever won individual acting Oscars, no one from Saturday Night Live has ever won an acting Oscar. Dan Aykroyd from the original cast was nominated for Driving Miss Daisy in 1989.
Ryan Gosling, Denis Villeneuve get Oscar nominations
Canadians Oscars nomination scoreboard
We are focused on the major Academy Award categories though plenty of Canadians get Oscar nominations.
CanadianCrossing.com film coverage
The 95th Academy Awards is Sunday at 8 pm Eastern on ABC in the United States and CTV in Canada.
video credit: YouTube/A24
photo credit: The Whale
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