Jamie Lee Curtis, Melissa Leo & The Brazen Art of Awards Campaigning
When it comes to trying to get an Oscar nomination, some actors are bolder than others
Consider…you’re an actress of a certain age, roles are tougher to come by than they used to be, you land a juicy one and you give it your all, and suddenly you’re in the conversation for an Oscar nomination. What do you do?
If you’re recent Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis, it’s everyone to their battle stations, all hands on deck, full frontal social media assault and a total talk show bonanza. Curtis, who won Best Supporting Actress two years ago for Everything Everywhere All At Once, has emerged as this generation’s most gifted, overt, and powerful Oscar campaigner. And this year, we are blessed with a second showcase of true awards campaigning brilliance.
Not since Melissa Leo donned luxurious furs and dared us to Consider her has there been an actor so transparently willing to the play the game. And thank god! I love it when an actor dares to make the subtext text and blatantly show us that it is all, in fact, a big glamorous game.
Leo famously got tons of flack for her glossy magazine spread, but as time as passed the logic of it has become more clear. She was an actress over 50, known for hardscrabble roles, and wanted to take control of how people perceived her so they’d be more open to “considering” her for more roles. And, it worked! She won the Oscar, and has been working steadily since.
Also here’s the thing: while overtly thirsty actors get a lot of flack…
Everyone plays the same game
Yes, everyone. Even those who refuse to play the game are (knowingly or unwittingly) still playing it, as their refusal can sometimes be seen as refreshing and actually help their cause. Mo’Nique famously refused to campaign for Precious and ended up winning, showing that there’s truly many ways to survive or subvert the awards machine.
Men, in particular, seem rewarded for not being thirsty and almost seeming annoyed or unbothered by awards (i.e. “too cool to care,” like Robert Downey Jr. last year or Kieran Culkin this year). It’s a double standard, to be sure, as most actresses in contention have to strike the impossible balance of being visible and promoting their films, but not acting like they want an Oscar nomination too much as to seem desperate. Oh gosh, I really don’t think about awards, I just really really love my craft.
Still, the few Katharine Hepburns asides, the vast majority of awards contenders willingly engage in the season in some way, through interviews and appearances and red carpets and stilted roundtables and those glossy magazine spreads where there’s always an ingenue laying across the floor and general hobnobbing around Hollywood.
But then there are the rare few actors, like Curtis and Leo, who cannonball into awards campaigning and turn it into its own sort of performance art.
Who can forget when Sharon Stone bought the Hollywood Foreign Press luxury watches? Or when Margaret Avery advertised in a newspaper with a letter written in the voice of her character from The Color Purple (a legendarily thirsty moment that I adore. Also, unrelated, Margaret Avery is fantastic on Netflix’s The Man Inside with Ted Danson! Watch it!)
This season, Curtis brings a return to the overt style of campaigning that annoys many and delights others. She parachuted into this year’s race rather late with her scene-stealing role as a blowsy Vegas cocktail waitress in Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl. She missed out on a Golden Globe nomination (likely due to the very limited release of the film before the voting window closed) but just scored SAG and BAFTA nominations, which puts her in great position to claim her second Oscar nomination.
And, like clockwork, she’s dusted off her winning playbook from Everything Everywhere and is once again going for broke.
So how does she so it?
Jamie Lee Curtis Has An Incredible Playbook
First, there is no greater champion for a movie than Jamie Lee Curtis. She is the Patrick Mahomes of Oscar campaigning. Put her in a film and she will promote the shit out of it. And not just the film, her fellow co-stars and the filmmakers themselves. Instagram posts galore, talk show appearances, interviews, Instagram clips of the interviews, Instagram pics of articles. She fires on all PR cylinders effortlessly, earnestly, eagerly. Her love for her job, her co-workers, and her films is never in question.
For Everything Everywhere All At Once’s campaign, she was very visible early and often in the awards season, extolling the many virtues of the film praising her co-stars, especially Michelle Yeoh, who had perhaps the most compelling narrative that awards season. She smartly kept the focus on others and positioned herself as the ultimate Team Player, the selfless field goal kicker cheering from the sidelines (why do I keep using sports metaphors? I apologize!)
As that awards season rolled on, EEAAO became a clear frontrunner, which meant more appearances, more interviews, more gushing about costars over social media. Yeoh and Key Huy Quan quickly and deservingly became frontrunners in their categories, so by the time the Oscar voters looked at their ballot, Curtis was top of mind in the Supporting Actress race as well.
Oh, I love Jamie Lee Curtis. She’s been such a selfless champion of this film, and she’s such a great actor with a legendary resume, I think I’ll vote for her as well.
The playbook proved a winning one. That season, Curtis won the SAG award for Best Supporting Actress and on Oscar night in a bit of an upset, she defeated Globe winner Angela Bassett and BAFTA winner Kerry Condon.
Touchdown.
This is Far From Over, You Haven’t Seen The Last (Showgirl) of Me
Now, Curtis is back on the circuit with The Last Showgirl. The film won’t be anywhere near the Oscars juggernaut EEAAO was, but Curtis and her co-star Pamela Anderson are squarely in the conversation in Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress, respectively, so Curtis has revved up her campaigning engines once again and is firing on all cylinders (okay now I switched to a car metaphor? John Loos, get it together you wet bitch!)
Since The Last Showgirl premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September, Curtis has been peppering her Instagram with clips from the festivals, of her backstage gushing over Anderson’s performance, of interviews where she explains how she immediately signed onto the film when she heard Anderson was starring.
Now, with the film released to theaters, she’s back posting excerpts of great reviews, interview clips, and once again smartly leveraging her co-star’s compelling personal narrative to help get eyeballs on the film. She’s also been openly raving about other actress’s performances this season, like Nicole Kidman in Babygirl, as a way to (intentionally or not) show her as the ultimate champion for women in the business.
And, it’s likely going to work again! She won’t win again, but she has quickly climbed the ladder of contenders and is now sitting around the #3 or #4 spot in many predictions (behind Zoe Saldana in Emilia Perez and Ariana Grande-Butera in Wicked).
So truly, hats off to an artist at work. Like Leo in 2011, Curtis brings a refreshing brazenness to red carpet season that defies the usual labels of desperation or thirst. Instead, it’s more brilliantly calculated, transparent, and authentic. She knows what she wants, she’s going for it, and you know what, you’re just going to have to be okay with that because feigning humility is for babies.
But! She’s not the only one who tries. Far, far from it!
Shout Out To Isabella Oscarllini
Isabella Rossellini, another beloved nepo queen, has also been very openly campaigning for a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her small but mighty role in Conclave. Though, admittedly, Rossellini’s approach has come across as far less thirsty and far more “I’m a goddamn legend, my mother is Oscar goddess Ingrid Bergman, you know what to do. Vote for me.”
Which, honestly, I deeply respect this approach. A mother mothers.
Again, there is absolutely no shame in playing the game, and Isabella is crushing it.
And so is her competition! Zoe Saldana’s Globe-winning speech was a college thesis on how to give an effective early-season awards speech. It had it all: tears, exasperated joy, the deep meaning of the film, the personal meaning of the award. It touched all the major points a speech should while imparting the value proposition of continuing to reward her this season: because the film is so deeply important, because I was once a little kid with big dreams and you’re helping my dreams come true…
Ariana Grande is also everywhere with costar Cynthia Erivo, wearing Glinda-inspired looks on the red carpet and hammering home the narrative that it was always her singular dream to play Glinda, ever since she was a little kid and saw it on Broadway and met Kristin Chenoweth.
So yes, everyone in Curtis’ category is playing the game, leveraging their strengths, shaping their narratives, and letting Oscar voters know why they deserve a nomination. But sorry Saldana, Grande, and Rossellini, when it comes to putting herself out there, no one can touch queen JLC.
Again, I deeply respect Curtis for her approach. If I ever make a movie, I’m putting her in it because her promotion and social media work would be S-tier. And truly, she forces us to confront a very human thing: Why, so often, can’t we declare what we want? What if we do? What if we take control, screw the haters, and fuck it, we’ll do it live?
Maybe, just maybe, that’s the secret to getting what we want after all.
Great read! We were just talking the other night about the Chicago improv scene and how one of the worst sins you could commit was to be nakedly ambitious about your goals. Seems like there's a similar vibe in awards season - campaign hard, but don't seem like you're campaigning.