LGBT-related nominees for Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards
by Donalevan Maines
In a year that pitted the 99 percent vs. the 1 percent, it didn’t seem like the 10 percent made much of a splash in movies and television. That is, until nominations came out from the critics’ groups, the Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe voters. Once again, awards season is primed to remind fans of LGBT’s visibility in art and commerce.
Even the Academy Awards, which won’t happen until February 26, already bowed to civility by getting rid of a producer who made a stupidly offensive gay slur. With him went Eddie Murphy, who’s always suffered from homophobic trash mouth. Instead, 63-year-old Billy Crystal hosts the broadcast, which is shaping up as an ode to film nostalgia led by silent-movie frontrunner The Artist.
At this year’s Oscars, 70 could be the new 50.
Christopher Plummer, 82, is certain to be celebrated for his performance as an elderly gent who bursts out of the closet after his wife passes away in Mike Mills’s Beginners. The movie tied for best picture with The Tree of Life, the year’s masterpiece, when the first salvo of awards season was fired by the 21st annual Gotham Independent Film Awards. Beginners also won best ensemble cast, led by another touching performance by Ewan MacGregor, who was criminally overlooked as a gay jailbird in last year’s I Love You, Phillip Morris.
However, only Plummer scored SAG and Golden Globe nominations.
At the Golden Globes, set to air on Sunday, January 15, on NBC, Plummer faces Albert Brooks, 64, playing against type in Drive; Viggo Mortensen, 53, as Sigmund Freud in A Dangerous Method; Kenneth Branagh, 51, as Sir Laurence Olivier, in My Week with Marilyn; and baby-faced Jonah Hill, 29 (Moneyball).
At the SAG honors, to be simulcast live on TNT and TBS on Sunday, January 29, Brooks and Mortensen are replaced in the lineup with Nick Nolte, 70, in Warrior and Armie Hammer, 25, the dreamy sidekick of J. Edgar, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role.
Leading the race for best actress at both competitions are Meryl Streep, 62, as The Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher and Viola Davis, 46, in the most audience-friendly Oscar contender, The Help. Gaining steam is Glenn Close, 64, as Albert Nobbs, a woman who lives as a man in 19th-century Britain. Close is also nominated as lyricist for the film’s best song finalist “Lay Your Head Down.” Elton John is up for writing the music to “Hello Hello” in Gnomeo & Juliet, while Madonna was cited for music and lyrics to “Masterpiece” for her directing effort, W.E.
Janet McTeery, Close’s gender-bending co-star in Albert Nobbs, figures in both supporting actress races.
Rooney Mara, as bisexual hacker Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is a best actress-drama nominee at the Globes, where Michelle Williams as Norma Jean in My Week with Marilyn should win best actress in a comedy or musical.
The Globes also hand out awards for television, last year honoring Chris Colfer as Kurt Hummel and Jane Lynch as Sue Sylvester in the best comedy series Glee. Only the show is nominated this year, along with Emmy winner Modern Family, which won acting nominations for Eric Stonestreet and Sofia Vergara. Among Vergara’s competition are bisexual actress Evan Rachel Wood in Mildred Pierce, which hopes to duplicate its Emmy wins in the category of best movie or miniseries and Kate Winslet and Guy Pearce in acting races.
The Big Bang Theory’s Jim Parsons, who won the Emmy for best actor in a TV comedy the past two years, is nominated at the Globes, but was snubbed by SAG in favor of his co-star Johnny Galecki. The guild also remembered Julie Bowen and, as a member of the Modern Family ensemble, out actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson as gay character Mitchell.
For a full list of SAG nominees, visit, www.sagawards.org. [To download a Screen Actors Guild Awards “Nominee Scorecard,” click here.] You’ll see LGBT-related mentions such as Diane Lane as the late Lance Loud’s mother in Cinema Verite; Jessica Lange in Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story; Aleksa Palladino as Angela Darmody, who had an affair with another woman in the first season of Boardwalk Empire; The Good Wife’s out costar Alan Cumming and, as bisexual Kalinda Sharma, Archie Panjabi; Oscar Nunez as Oscar Martinez, the gay guy in The Office; along with Game of Thrones, Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, and True Blood.
At the Globes, In the Land of Blood and Honey, the first movie directed by famously bisexual Angelina Jolie, is nominated for best foreign-language film. Jolie’s other half, Brad Pitt, is nominated for best actor for Moneyball. Michael Fassbender is nominated for Shame, as are Jodie Foster, for Carnage, and Tim Robbins, for Cinema Verite.
For a complete list of nominees, visit www.goldenglobes.org.
Missing from both lists and for your consideration are Mia Wasikowska (The Kids Are All Rright) as Jane Eyre; Corey Stoll (Ernest Hemingway in Midnight In Paris, although Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein is listed in the SAG best cast ensemble nomination); and the lesbian-themed Pariah from breakthrough director Dee Rees.
• Golden Globe Awards (goldenglobes.org): 7 p.m. central time, Sunday, January 15, on NBC.
• Screen Actors Guild Awards (sagawards.org): simulcast live at 7 p.m. central time on TNT and TBS on Sunday, January 29. To download a Screen Actors Guild Awards “Nominee Scorecard,” click here.
Donalevan Maines is a regular contributor to OutSmart magazine.
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