The Million Dollar Sentimental Favorite
When it comes to the Oscars, I have never been a fan of giving the award to the sentimental favorite. It has long been popular to hand out Oscars to veteran actors who have never won, even for a subpar acting performance. This is why Oscars were handed out to winless faves Henry Fonda in 1981, Sean Connery (for
The Untouchables?!?) in 1987, and Al Pacino in 1992. I've always thought that you only deserve an Oscar when you actually are the best
in a given year. Once you start whining "
Goodness, how come he hasn't been given an Oscar yet?" you lose the integrity of the competition. If it's all about reputation and not about the individual performance, then the Oscar becomes as inignificant as an MTV Movie Award statuette.
I was thinking about all of this when I heard about Morgan Freeman's nomination for
Million Dollar Baby yesterday. But after evaluating his performance, I decided that I can root for the man in good conscience. For several years, I have believed that Morgan Freeman is the greatest living actor never to have won an Academy Award. But I don't think he's ever been robbed of the Oscar (Tom Hanks was better in '94) and I never advocated handing him an award for
The Sum of All Fears or
Bruce Almighty. I saw
Million Dollar Baby two weeks ago and from start to finish, it was clear that Freeman had knocked this one out of the park. Perfectly cast as a washed up boxer, perfectly delivered performance. The man is in a class by himself when it comes to playing the veteran mentor and nobody is more dignified on screen.
This morning on the
Today show, Matt Lauer asked him about this, asking how he and Clint Eastwood utilize "underacting" in their performances. Freeman responded, "Jesus Matt, I don't know what underacting is!" It immediately called to mind Freeman's line from
The Shawshank Redemption: "Rehabilitated? Let's
see now. You know, come to think of
it, I have no idea what that means."
Both lines were perfectly delivered in the same voice, from that of a man who now deserves that Oscar.