In Tropic Thunder, Robert Downey Jr launches into a magnificent dissection of the Academy's voting technique, wherein he explains just how mentally-challenged an actor should act to win an Oscar, with a brief history of Best Actor winners and losers. Look it up.
In keeping with last year's funniest performer, here then is some more advice based on the ghosts of Oscar past, advice to help any aspiring statuette-collectors along their way.
If you're making a biopic:
Hunt for conflict. Drama stories can't end on a happy note, and the voters love a pathetic soul to feel sorry for. Exaggerate blindness, pathos and failure, and hand your actor a tough accent to mimic.
Something mumbled and incomprehensible works wonderfully, and while you dole out idiosyncratic whimsy for your leading actor to chew scenery with, make sure you give them lots of brooding moments of nothingness.
Moments where the actor leafs through a photo album, dolefully licks a stamp, or looks wistfully out a bay window with teary eyes.
Don't go too esoteric, though, or you'll be in the I'm Not There zone. Oh, and there must be at least one grandstanding soliloquy, of course.
In picture: Jamie Foxx in Ray, Russell Crowe in a Beautiful Mind
Text: Raja Sen
Also Read: Review: A Beautiful Mind
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