The 2014 Academy Awards, which were decided on March 2, inspired me to post a series of blogs on movies that are based on research I’ve done recently for clients.
This is the fourth and last blog in the series.
My first movie blog was entitled "Movie Audiences Like Actresses Less Than Actors." The title is based on the fact that the top 12 highest-grossing actors (and 78 of the top 100) are men. My second movie blog was entitled "Ten Highly-Acclaimed Sports Movies." My third movie blog was entitled “27 English Best Actor Oscar Winners.”
I have decided to call my series of movie blogs The Martins.
The Martins Part IV
I have long sensed that Hollywood -- and the American people in general -- have a preference for people with English accents. Sometimes, it seems like we believe the English are superior and we should never have rebelled against the autocratic King George III and established a democracy.
While doing research for a client, I found out that 27 English people have won Oscars for Best Actor and Best Actress.
The 14 Best Actor winners in chronological order are George Arliss, Charles Laughton, Victor McLaglen, Robert Donat, Ronald Colman, Laurence Olivier, Alec Guinness, David Niven, Rex Harrison, Paul Scofield, Ben Kingsley, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jeremy Irons, and Colin Firth. The 13 Best Actress winners in chronological order are Vivien Leigh, Joan Fontaine, Greer Garson, Olivia de Havilland, Audrey Hepburn, Julie Andrews, Julie Christie, Maggie Smith, Glenda Jackson, Jessica Tandy, Emma Thompson, Helen Mirren, and Kate Winslet.
Then, I researched the number of Canadians who have won Oscars for Best Actor and Best Actress. Do you want to know the answer? Before you guess, keep in mind that about 53 million people live in England and about 33.5 million people live in Canada. Thus, if Canadians were as good as English people in acting, the answer should be approximately 17.
The answer is THREE -- and no Canadian has won a Best Actor or Best Actress award since 1931. The three Canadian winners were actresses Mary Pickford (1929 for “Coquette”), Norma Shearer (1930 for “The Divorcee”), and Marie Dressler (1931 for “Min and Bill”). More remarkably, only one Canadian (Genevieve Bujold in 1969) has been nominated for the Best Actress award since 1938.
No Canadian has ever won a Best Actor Oscar. There have been four who have been nominated -- Walter Huston, Raymond Massey, Walter Pidgeon, and Alexander Knox. NO Canadians have been nominated since 1944. That’s just plain weird.
Of course, the English could simply be far better actors than Canadians, although I don’t know why that would be true.
Now, I have posted a photo of Dan Aykroyd with this story for a reason. Aykroyd, who is pictured with the English Tandy in a scene from “Driving Miss Daisy,” was one of eight Canadians to be nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. The others are Huston, Hume Cronyn, Harold Russell, John Ireland, Chief Dan George, Graham Greene, and Christopher Plummer. Yes, Aykroyd was nominated for his “Daisy” performance. Yes, Tandy won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for “Daisy.”
The Canadians who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor were Russell (who wasn’t a professional actor, but won the 1946 Oscar for “The Best Years of Our Lives”), Huston (1948 for “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”), and Plummer (2011 for “Beginners”). By the way, Humphrey Bogart’s performance in “Sierra Madre” was one of the best performances ever, but he wasn’t even nominated.
Only one Canadian won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress -- Anna Paquin for the 1993 film “The Piano.” The only losing nominees were Kate Nelligan and sisters Meg Tilly and Jennifer Tilly.
The number of English people who were nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress Oscars dwarfs the number of Canadian nominees, but Canadians Plummer and Paquin made history by becoming the oldest and second youngest ever winners of their respective awards. Plummer was 82 and Paquin was 11.
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