The Oscars have finally realised that age is no barrier
Age – in an industry that places such a premium on gilded youth – proved no barrier at this year’s Oscars to a historic set of victories. For the first time since 1982, every one of Sunday night’s winning actors was over 50 years old: Michelle Yeoh (60), Brendan Fraser (54), Ke Huy Quan (51) and Jamie Lee Curtis (64).
This is only the third time in history that this has occurred. Not one of them started out as the frontrunner to win; not one had ever been nominated before. And yet all have a place in the affections of the film industry, and film fans around the world, that Academy voters were finally, at what’s usually a late stage in an actor’s career, unable to ignore.
Forty-one years ago, before that barren run began, it was Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, John Gielgud and Maureen Stapleton in the quartet of veteran champions. You couldn’t have called Hepburn overdue – that was her fourth Best Actress Oscar, after all – but the others certainly were. On Golden Pond, the mellow Hepburn-Fonda valedictory vehicle that scored them both trophies in their mid-seventies, coloured that night (which was otherwise the Chariots of Fire victory lap) with nostalgia for the beloved icons of cinema’s past.
Compare two years ago, when Anthony Hopkins won Best Actor for The Father at the age of 83, beating the record previously held by Christopher Plummer, as the oldest ever acting winner. It was a monumental upset: everyone’s expectation was that Chadwick Boseman was going to take the award posthumously. Only the reverence for Hopkins, giving one of his greatest performances, turned out to be the winning ticket.
This year, by contrast, all four of the victors know in their bones that there’s no such thing as a comeback without being older and wiser. And one of the comebacks is as long-range as they come. Ke Huy Quan, who won Best Supporting Actor for Everything Everywhere All at Once, has been a near-total stranger to cinema since his discovery in 1984, when Steven Spielberg cast him as Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. He hadn’t retired from the industry, in his own assessment – he was simply waiting. A large measure of the joy behind him winning belongs to memories of that performance – one of the supreme examples of child acting, in the canon of a filmmaker whose work is hardly light on those.
Michelle Yeoh, the first Asian woman to win Best Actress, is a legendary performer in genres and filmmaking traditions that the Oscars have habitually spurned. The last time she came anywhere near this level of acclaim was for Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which was a major contender in 2001, and in which her gravity and physical grace were enormous assets.
All season, Cate Blanchett was out in front for her Tár performance – certainly one of the most acclaimed of her career. What it lacked, though, for all her insight and wicked command? The sense of story. Blanchett has won twice before, and achieves nominations at least two or three times a decade. For Yeoh, landing even a single one may often have seemed like a far-off pipedream.
Not only did voters seize the single chance they assumed they were ever going to get to reward her, but Yeoh herself, entering her seventh decade, finally seized the day. Her performance in the film is full of detailed self-knowledge as a career-capper; her delight to be involved throughout this awards season bespoke an understandable craving to clinch it. When Everything Everywhere was building up steam as the runaway juggernaut it became, it suddenly would have felt like a grievous snub if her name hadn’t been called out.
Best Supporting Actress, meanwhile, offered a choice of two seasoned actresses, both 64, vying for long-overdue recognition, at that point in their careers where many contemporaries have faded reluctantly into retirement. Angela Bassett looked bruised to lose for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, but Curtis campaigned with rare sensitivity and charm, and had the big advantage of being hitched to the winning Everything Everywhere wagon. She defied ageism in her speech, and even made a virtue of her “nepo baby” credentials as Hollywood royalty, pointing out that both her parents, Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, had been nominated in their time, but neither had won.
As for Brendan Fraser, he could easily have decades more work left in him; 54 is hardly close to retirement age. One hopes that his obvious emotional investment in The Whale results in some richer scripts coming his way. He might look over to the career of his fellow Canadian Christopher Plummer, who got his first of three nominations when he was fully 80, and his last at 88, with a win (for Beginners) in the middle.
But for Fraser to have beaten the new kid on the block, 31-year-old Austin Butler for Elvis, proves something even more consoling: that Hollywood doesn’t give up on its faded stars. When the right moment comes along, it’s more eager than ever to renew their lustre.
