The “Star 80 Syndrome,” as Roger Ebert called it, has always dictated Oscars winners. Until now.
Great villain performances are often represented at the Academy Awards. Javier Bardem won for No Country for Old Men, Kathy Bates won for Misery, and, basically, any actor who has played the Joker has got one. But there is a level of evil that, no matter how good the performance is, the Academy cannot bring itself to honor. Ralph Fiennes didn’t win for playing a Nazi in Schindler’s List. Michael Fassbender didn’t win for playing a slave owner in 12 Years a Slave. Nor did Jackie Earle Haley win for playing a gruesome child molester in Little Children. The Academy seemingly finds it distasteful, as if the voting body believes it is somehow endorsing the actions of the character, not simply the actor’s performance.
There are many do’s and don’ts to winning an Oscar. Kate Winslet knows how to increase your odds to capture the gold. Robert Downey, Jr., knows how to ensure you go home empty-handed. Now that award season is over, and the dust has settled, we have two more actors who have beaten the Star 80 allegations. Both Sean Penn, for his role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, and Amy Madigan, for her role in the horror breakout Weapons won, awards for playing villains.
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The late Roger Ebert wrote about this very issue several times. On The Late Show with Joan Rivers, Ebert coined the term “Star 80 syndrome” when discussing Gary Oldman’s Oscar chances for playing Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy.
“I tell you who definitely won’t be nominated—and should be—that’s a young British actor named Gary Oldman, who plays Sid Vicious, the punk rocker, in Sid and Nancy. And he’s going to fall prey to the Star 80 syndrome, which is why Eric Roberts wasn’t nominated: Hollywood will not nominate an actor for portraying a creep, no matter how good the performance is. He should have been nominated.” —Roger Ebert, October 17, 1986
Ebert was referencing Eric Roberts’s role in Bob Fosse’s Star 80, in which he played an abusive, murderous husband so well that he was completely ignored by the Academy. The invisible line the voters draw seems to hinge on realism. Anton Chigurh, Hannibal Lecter, Annie Wilkes—their evil is so over the top that the characters are seen as akin to comic-book villains. The Joker literally is a comic-book character. The rationale, presumably, is that a small measure of unreality creates just enough distance for the audience to truly appreciate the performance. Certain conventions can help achieve that emotional distance. It helped that Bardem’s performance was contained within a neo-noir genre piece. Heath Ledger literally had conversations with Batman. Once a film character crosses over into real life—playing a real person or depicting a real-life atrocity—it becomes much harder to take home Oscar gold. The Academy will award the film (Schindler’s List, 12 Years a Slave), but the actor who embodies the darkness at the center of those stories usually goes home empty-handed.
Both Amy Madigan and Sean Penn, who won Oscars this past weekend for Best Supporting Actress and Best Actor, respectively, had genre conventions protecting them from becoming too real. Although Madigan’s character, Aunt Gladys, harmed children in the film Weapons, she did so as a witch. The story itself was a supernatural horror film; it didn’t take place in the real world, protecting the audience just enough from the fear of endorsing real-world actions. It also didn’t hurt that she got her just deserts.
Penn’s Col. Lockjaw appears in a slightly more realistic context—there’s no outright magic—but his character was protected by existing in a Dr. Strangelove-esque satire. We can laugh at his toddler-like physicality and the sad reality that his fascist reward is the most depressing-looking office in all of the United States. Were Col. Lockjaw and Aunt Gladys kept from being labelled “creeps” because we could laugh at both of them? Perhaps.
Sometimes the Academy will go as far as to give a back-door Oscar. In Django Unchained, Leonardo DiCaprio played one of the most despicable humans imaginable: a cruel, torturous slave owner whose depravity ostensibly kept him from Oscar gold. His opposite in the film, Christoph Waltz, however, took home the award for Best Supporting Actor.
In 2009, Waltz won the Best Supporting Actor award for a character written by Quentin Tarantino who speaks three languages, has a loquacious charm and devious wit, and is capable of intense violence. Then, in 2013, he won the same award for a character written by Quentin Tarantino who speaks three languages, has a loquacious charm and devious wit, and is capable of intense violence. Dr. King Schultz is the chaotic good to Col. Hans Landa’s chaotic evil in Inglourious Basterds. Both performances are remarkable, but they cover a great deal of the same ground. It is hard not to wonder whether Waltz won the second time because the Academy was reluctant to honor anyone playing a character like Calvin Candie—and whether, by awarding Waltz, they found a way to honor his opponent and, thus, in some transitive sense, DiCaprio himself.
What is a John McClane without a Hans Gruber? Who is Clarice without Hannibal? Villains complete the narrative and provide the foundation upon which great stories of heroism are built. The problem is that when such a story is too accurate a reflection of the real world, it becomes too painful—or too off-putting—to reward the artists who paint that portrait. But, as Ebert wrote of Sid and Nancy:
“Why should anyone care about a movie about two scabrous vulgarians? Because the subject of a really good movie is sometimes not that important. It’s the acting, writing, and direction that count. If a movie can illuminate the lives of other people who share this planet with us and show us not only how different they are but, even so, how they share the same dreams and hurts, then it deserves to be called great. If you have an open mind, it is possibly true that the less you care about Sid Vicious, the more you will admire this movie.”
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