In Oscar Race, Two Actors With No Lines

As the Oscar race gets into gear in December, studios are positioning their films and talent for the  little gold statuettes.  In the Best Actor race, there are two performances that are being pushed for consideration in which the actors don't speak.  They are Andy Serkis, who played the lead Cesar in RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES and Jean Dujardin who plays a silent movie star in THE ARTIST. Currently, the odds are in favor of Dujardin getting a nod as critical reaction to his charming movie has been through the roof.  Also, Dujardin won Best Actor at Canne's earlier this year when the film debut.  Even though he speaks barely a line of dialogue, his performance is what keeps the film together.

In the case of APES, Fox is pushing hard for Serkis' work in digital performance capture to be nominated for an award.  (There is story about their efforts in the Hollywood Reporter this week.)  Though their line is that dialogue doesn't matter, one thing that does matter is faces.  And Serkis's face is not in the movie at all.  And even though they are trying to get him a Best Supporting Actor nod, it seems like a long shot. Actors vote for the actor awards and I can't imagine there is a lot of enthusiasm in that camp for turning over the awards to digital creations when so much of Hollywood's films are already highly digitized.  Also, they tried this strategy with AVATAR a few years back and failed.  But then again, it was a few years ago and one can't deny that Cesar was one of the more memorable scene stealers of the year.