(LIST) the 10 Hottest SUPPORTING ACTORS and 5 Bad SUPPORTING ACTRESSES!

by Louis Virtel

 

The 85th Academy Awards are at last upon us, and unfortunately we only have a few more days to think about the eternal hotness of some of the men they honor. As a companion piece to our Hottest Best Actor countdown, I present to you an important follow-up: The 10 Hottest Best Supporting Actor performances. Heath Ledger, Javier Bardem, and Christian Bale were too inhumanely grotesque to warrant inclusion, I'm sort of sorry to say. But who wasn't? Check 'em out below.

10. George Clooney in Syriana

 

Get this: Syriana is the one movie on this list I haven't seen. Should I feel bad about that? George's win always struck me as compensation for the fact that he wasn't going to win the directing Oscar for Good Night and Good Luck (which he noted in his awful speech), but maybe it's a great performance. Also: I am not attracted to him in any way, and never have been. Self-conscious sinisterness isn't hot! It's hokey! That's why he barely hangs on at #10, still edging out the adorable '60s totem Martin Balsam in A Thousand Clowns.

9. Frank Sinatra

 

I hate this man and his pitchy voice. Mia Farrow does what she wants, Frank, and Rosemary's Baby is better than everything you produced in your pitchy lifetime, so you were basically a horrible fool for ordering her not to take the role. Too bad my man Monty Clift should've taken this trophy in '53. His eyes are portals into a great big sad sapphire closet. But hey. Nice teeth, Frank.

8. Joel Grey in Cabaret

 

Yeah take that, Frank Sinatra, I put the psychopathic ringmaster ahead of you. Seriously, Joel Grey is not only bad-ass in Cabaret, but he has a freakish edge that's sort of like if Jeremy Irons starred in Victor/Victoria. In other words: A sex dream.

7. Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda

 

Underrated performance: Kevin Kline in Sophie's Choice. Harrowing and crazy. Where was that Oscar nomination? Thankfully he's a delight in A Fish Called Wanda and treats us to moments of balmy shirtlessness too. Try maintaining your droll John Cleese-y composure checking out this guy.

6. Timothy Hutton in Ordinary People

The cutest little Best Supporting Actor there ever was! Look at his traumatized widdle faaaace. Ordinary People is one of the best family dramas ever, and with one of the most spotless ensembles too. (Mary Tyler Moore as the deranged, super-beige mom? Perfection.) Mr. Leverage remains the youngest Best Supporting Actor, and as far as I know, he's the only Best Supporting Actor ever alleged to have a restraining order against a Best Supporting Actress. That's still the best Angelina Jolie rumor ever.

5. Cuba Gooding Jr. in Jerry Maguire

Among Best Supporting Actor performances, this is sure is underrated as a deeply shirtless, ass-baring, pubis-baring role. Cuba Gooding Jr. may be more talented than his post-Oscar career would have you believe, but let's never forget how much we fanned ourselves whenever he came onscreen in this winner from '96. And let's also never forget how shocked we were to fan ourselves again when Jonathan Lipnicki turned out to be a hot adult.

4. Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds

What a scary, scary performance and a studly, overtly hot man. His voice is dastardly, yet totally audiobook-ready. I personally think Mr. Waltz is a delicious addition to modern cinema. In that movie Carnage, he gave the only tolerable performance, and he was in that with Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, and John C. Reilly. Insane talent still loses to Christoph Waltz.

3. Robert De Niro in The Godfather, Part II

Even a contrarian like me can admit that Robert De Niro is one of the premiere BAMFs of cinematic history. I'll even add that he was gorgeous and terribly sexy, particularly when he smirked like a total criminal. (See above.) Note the pointiness of his visage. Those are some Gosling angles right there. Just confirmed with a protractor.

2. George Chakiris in West Side Story

 

West Side Story: a gorgeously photographed movie with excellent dancing and fine supporting performances that is terrible in every other way. Overlong, anticlimactic, boring, and Natalie Wood seems to be actively campaigning for us to hate her. (But I don't!) George Chakiris (pictured above center), however, is a revelation, and he is so, so fine. Balletic, vivacious, and model hot. An ideal candidate for canonization.

1. Denzel Washington in Glory

Glory: An unforgettable film about an under-discussed chapter in U.S. History. It should be watched in schools. But please, let's remember its other triumph: its presentation of the totally talented hotness that is Denzel Washington. I put this list together knowing before I reviewed the rest of the winners that he'd come in first. That's how hot he is. And I suspect he'll be just as hot at the ceremony on Sunday, where he's nominated for Flight. Sigh. You hate to see a hot thing lose.

Every year we hear from the Oscar cynics. "Marisa Tomei for My Cousin Vinny?" they clamor. "Ingrid Bergman in Murder on the Orient Express?" they ask. "Ugh, Renee Zellweger in Cold Mountain?" they huff, ending with a self-satisfied moan. Yes, the Oscars routinely reward the wrong people, but there's a bigger problem at hand: We need to criticize bad Oscar decisions even when it means disagreeing with conventional wisdom and not looking cool. It's a hard job, but I'd rather be right than a run-of-the-mill hater.

Since I already posted my list of the 5 All-Time Best Supporting Actress-winning performances, I thought I'd update my ranks with another Supporting Actress rundown. This time it's a whinier mission: Let's point out five winners who are never called out for their undeserving performances. Rest easy, Mira Sorvino. This time we're going after the titans.

5. Melissa Leo in The Fighter


Melissa Leo was blistering on Homicide: Life on the Street and in the awesome Frozen River, but in David O. Russell's The Fighter, she's the broadest caricature of an overbearing momager I've probably ever seen. Is it really Oscar-worthy to squawk and mug like any of Jo Anne Worley's characters on Laugh In? (No offense to the divine Ms. Worley!) Leo is simply ridiculous when she drags her coterie of daughters to tangle with Amy Adams, who -- by the way -- is the one who really deserved the Oscar. That was a human performance with tough moments. Leo is merely an angry facial contortionist here.

4. Lee Grant in Shampoo


Let me be clear: I am probably the top-ranked Lee Grant fan in existence. Her Oscar speech was sincere and cheeky, her hair is routinely fabulous, she rebounded from blacklisting like no one else, and she is Oscar-worthy in everything from Detective Story to Defending Your Life. Hell, I might've given it to her for Voyage of the Damned, too. But we have a problem: Shampoo sucks. It's not funny, it's not memorable, and mysteriously Lee Grant plays the least consequential character in the picture. It's cute when she flashes a middle finger during one key scene and becomes an utterly horny wraith during another, but clearly the Academy wanted to reward for Grant for having a thriving career in the wake of her blacklisting, not for wowing us in a special role. I'm relieved that Grant has an Oscar, but she gave us so many other performances that warrant gold. '75 should've been the year of our girl Lily Tomlin for her work in Nashville.

3. Ruth Gordon in Rosemary's Baby


Yes, it's a cute idea that Bewitched's Gladys Kravitz could be a henchman of Satan, but it's not an Oscar-worthy one. In the marvelous Rosemary's Baby, the fabulous Ruth Gordon was rewarded for a neighborly role that's hypothetically awesome, but just one-note and plain on film. Her character doesn't even enjoy a true arc. She's kind of funny, but she's not an essential part of the drama at hand -- and Christ, is there some drama going on here. Gordon is true Hollywood royalty who wrote the kickass movies Adam's Rib and Pat and Mike, but her Best Supporting Actress win is misplaced recognition both for Gordon and a film that succeeds so chillingly on many other levels.
 
2. Shelley Winters in A Patch of Blue

A Patch of Blue is a simple story of a blind white girl who falls for an upstanding black man and fears the wrath of her bigoted mother. Sidney Poitier dutifully plays the romantic Good Samaritan, the underrated Elizabeth Hartman is a heartstopping revelation as the meek, yet poignantly moral protagonist, and Shelley Winters is -- well -- just loud as her harridan mother character. How could the Academy reward a performance (and role) that is simply bland, ugly, comic book evil? Why is this woman so awful? Why is she constantly throwing tantrums? This is scene-chewing nonsense in an otherwise fascinating movie, and Shelley Winters is more compellingly dimensional in even The Poseidon Adventure.

1. Vanessa Redgrave in Julia


This makes me so mad. So mad!

Jane Fonda is fully realized, shrewd, conscientious, and alive as Lillian Hellman in Julia, the near-fictionalized account of The Children's Hour author's relationship with Dashiell Hammett (Jason Robards, in an undeserving Oscar performance) and a distant childhood friend named Julia (Vanessa Redgrave). As Roger Ebert once put it, this movie wants to be about Julia, but it's not at all. Redgrave appears for the most part in dimly lit flashbacks where she just smiles at the camera or strides through Oxford. Otherwise, she only has real dialogue in one scene where she instructs Julia to place a controversial package in a hat. That is it! There is nothing to this performance, and Redgrave won for her radiant good looks. The movie keeps wanting us to fall in love with her, but it doesn't even bother to humanize her. Redgrave's character amounts to the familiar Manic Pixy Dream Girl, except this time it's a contemplative female playwright and not a boring heterosexual male who yearns for her. I just don't get it. This is not to say Redgrave isn't a phenomenal actress. See last year's Coriolanus for a performance that was criminally overlooked by the Academy.

Which other Best Supporting Actresses deserve to be called out for their less-than-stellar wins?