When Keeping it Real Results in Oscar Gold

Feb 25, 2012
Ryan Loftis

Patton (1970) movie poster - 20th Century Fox

In recent years, many actors have won Academy Awards for portraying real people.

When the Academy Awards air this Sunday, four of the actors in contention will have received their nominations for playing real people: Brad Pitt as Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane in Moneyball; Meryl Streep as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady; and Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh as screen legends Marilyn Monroe and Sir Laurence Olivier in My Week with Marilyn. Should any of them win, they will join a long list of actors in recent history who've taken home the Oscar for portraying a real person.

1970

George C. Scott famously refused to accept Best Actor for playing General George S. Patton in Patton, calling competition between actors a "meat parade." He was much more passionate about a ping-pong tournament he played between takes against a world champion table-tennis player.

1976

Robert Redford, as producer and star, considered Jason Robards his first choice to play Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee in All the President's Men. Redford got his wish, and Robards won Best Supporting Actor.

1980

Robert DeNiro is famous for his Method acting approach, and his role as former boxing champion Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull was no exception. First, he trained vigorously and then entered three actual Brooklyn boxing matches, winning two of them. Then he gained 60 pounds to play the older LaMotta, a record at the time. The real LaMotta was in the audience the night DeNiro won Best Actor.

The same night, Sissy Spacek won Best Actress for playing country music legend Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter. Lynn personally picked Spacek to play her, but the original director disagreed and was replaced with Michael Apted. Apted wanted Spacek to sing all the songs live to make the performing scenes seem realistic. Like LaMotta, Lynn was in the audience to watch Spacek accept her award.

1981

Maureen Stapleton's performance as anarchist Emma Goldman in Reds made her the fourth of four consecutive Best Supporting Actress winners with "M.S." initials. She tried to research by reading Goldman's biography, but found doing so boring.

1982

Ben Kingsley's paternal family was from the Indian state of Gujarat, the same state Indian independence movement leader Mahatma Gandhi was from. Not only did Kingsley's performance in the title role of Gandhi win him Best Actor, but during filming India natives thought he was Gandhi's ghost.

1984

F. Murray Abraham won Best Actor for playing Italian composer Antonio Salieri in Amadeus. Film critic Leonard Maltin has said early success followed by professional failure is referred to as "F. Murray Abraham syndrome" in Hollywood circles given the state of Abraham's career after his win. Abraham responded by saying, "I have dined with kings, shared equal billing with my idols, lectured at Harvard and Columbia. If this is a jinx, I'll take two."

1989

Daniel Day-Lewis also went the Method route while playing Irish writer and poet Christy Brown - who except for his left foot was almost completely paralyzed - in My Left Foot. The hunched-over position created by refusing to leave his wheelchair during weeks of filming resulted in him breaking two ribs. His agent visited the set and left out of frustration when Day-Lewis refused to come out of character as Brown. The commitment was worth it: Day-Lewis won Best Actor. Brenda Fricker also won Best Supporting Actress as Brown's mother.

1990

The case of businessman and accused wife killer Claus von Bulow grabbed the world's attention. Jeremy Irons' portrayal of von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune won him Best Actor. Irons met von Bulow several years after the film's release and said, "He didn't tell me anything I didn't already know."

1995

Susan Sarandon's portrayal of Roman Catholic nun and anti-death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking won her Best Actress. Prejean, who had been told a "famous actress" from "Thelma and Louise" would play her, met Sarandon and said, "Thank God, it's Louise."

1996

Geoffrey Rush took piano lessons until he was 14. Thirty years later he started again as preparation for playing mentally ill pianist David Helfgott in Shine. The result: He became the first Australian-born thespian to win Best Actor.

1998

This was the only time two actors received Oscar nominations for playing the same character in two different films in the same year. Cate Blanchett lost Best Actress for playing Elizabeth I in Elizabeth, while Dame Judi Dench won Best Supporting Actress for playing Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love. Appearing onscreen for eight minutes in four scenes, Dench's was the second shortest performance to win Best Supporting Actress.

1999

To get the role of transsexual murder victim Brandon Teena in Boys Don't Cry, Hilary Swank told director Kimberly Pierce that, like Teena, she was 21 and from Lincoln, Neb. Those were lies, but they helped her win the role--at an approximately $3,000 salary. The role won her Best Actress.

2000

She's had plenty of other successful movies, but it's hard to imagine a role more professionally satisfying for Julia Roberts than the title role in Erin Brockovich. Signing on to play the unemployed single mother turned consumer advocate, she became the first woman to break the $20 million salary mark and won Best Actress. Brockovich herself appeared in the movie as a waitress named Julia. Where she didn't appear was in Roberts' acceptance speech. "It doesn't bring out the Einstein moment that you hoped it would," Roberts said later.

2001

Jennifer Connelly's profile was rising in Hollywood due to her performance in the independent film Requiem for a Dream when she auditioned for the role of Alicia Nash, wife of schizophrenic mathematics genius John Nash, in A Beautiful Mind. Her chemistry with costar Russell Crowe during her audition won her the role. Her Best Supporting Actress win was one of the movie's four Oscars.

Jim Broadbent won Best Supporting Actor for playing John Bayley, husband of novelist Iris Murdoch, in Iris. Like Murdoch, Broadbent's mother had died of Alzheimer's disease. Shortly after winning, Joan Rivers asked him in a live television interview, "You're Australian, aren't you?" Broadbent is actually British.

2002

According to Tom Cruise biographer Andrew Morton, when Cruise and Nicole Kidman split in 2001, Cruise's aides told her that her career was over. If true, they were wrong. Wearing a false nose and learning to write right handed, Kidman won Best Actress for playing author Virginia Woolf in The Hours. The Oscar, by the way, is an honor Cruise still hasn't won.

Best Actor honors that night went to Adrien Brody. Wladyslaw Szpilman's memoir of being a Polish-Jewish musician living in Holocaust-era Warsaw was the inspiration for The Pianist. Director Roman Polanski was dissatisfied with all of the more than 1,400 actors who auditioned to play Szpilman and sought out Brody. To connect with the role's feeling of loss, Brody not only shed 31 pounds but got rid of his apartment, sold his car and stopped watching television.

2003

For years Charlize Theron was known as a world-class beauty appearing in popcorn films like The Italian Job. Then she gained 30 pounds, wore heavy dentures and sported leathery skin to play serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster. Theron won Best Actress on what would have been Wuornos' birthday, Feb. 29.

2004

The music aspect was easy for Jamie Foxx while playing music legend Ray Charles in Ray. After all, he had begun playing piano at age 3, led his gospel church's band and received a piano scholarship to college. Convincingly playing a blind man, however, was another story. To that end, Foxx attended classes at the Braille Institute and wore eye prosthetics that actually made him blind for up to 14 hours a day during filming. Foxx won Best Actor eight months after Charles' death.

Cate Blanchett's Best Supporting Actress win for portraying screen legend Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator made her the first performer to win an Oscar for playing an actual Oscar winner. To prepare for the role, Blanchett adopted Hepburn's habits of playing tennis and golf and taking cold showers. To resemble Hepburn she had freckles painted onto her face, arms and chest.

2005

Plump Philip Seymour Hoffman lost 40 pounds to play author Truman Capote in Capote. In his Best Actor acceptance speech, Hoffman asked the audience to congratulate his mother, saying, "She brought up four kids alone, and she deserves a congratulations for that."

2006

Forest Whitaker spent three and a half months in Uganda researching and filming his role as that country's former dictator, Idi Amin, in The Last King of Scotland, for which he won Best Actor. Whitaker claimed to have stayed in character even when off the set.

Playing a very different leader also resulted in Oscar gold that night. What's better? Your performance receiving a five minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival or winning Best Actress? Helen Mirren couldn't tell you. She received both for her performance as Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen.

2007

Marion Cotillard shaved back her hairline and shaved off her eyebrows - later penciled in - to play legendary singer Edith Pilaf in La Vie en Rose. She became the first Best Actress winner for a foreign language role since Sophia Loren in 1962.

2008

Sean Penn became the ninth performer to win Best Actor twice for playing LGBT rights martyr Harvey Milk in Milk. Of course, he wouldn't be Penn without making a provocative statement, in this case thanking "you commie, homo-loving sons of guns" and offering support for gay marriage in his acceptance speech.

2009

Sandra Bullock turned down The Blind Side role of Leigh Anne Tuohy - adopted mother of future NFL superstar Michael Oher - three times because of concerns about playing a devout Christian. Early in filming she considered dropping out because of concerns about her performance. She ended up winning Best Actress.

2010

His second consecutive nomination earned Colin Firth Best Actor for his performance as King George VI in The King's Speech. An even more impressive accomplishment when you consider the role was written with Paul Bettany in mind. Bettany declined to spend more time with his family.

Mark Wahlberg may have been star of The Fighter, but it was Christian Bale and Melissa Leo who took home honors as boxer Micky Ward's brother and mother, winning Best Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress. Wahlberg knew Bale from their daughters attending the same elementary school and asked him to participate in the film. To play a crack addict Bale lost 30 pounds. Leo originally told director David O. Russell that she was too young to play Wahlberg's and Bale's mother. She famously let the f-word slip during her acceptance speech.