Michael Keaton has been the frontrunner so long in this category that it is hard to remember a time when he wasn't expected to win the 2015 Best Actor Oscar. In fact, there hasn't been a time when he was not the frontrunner. From the very earliest 2015 Oscar predictions, Michael Keaton has been among the top candidates for the Best Actor Oscar, and now that we are actually here, his victory appears to be more certain than ever. In Birdman, Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thomson, a washed up actor once famous for his role as Birdman in a series of superhero films, but now struggling to achieve recognition as a serious artist. In order to resurrect his career as a legitimate "thespian", Riggan does what all actors do who want to be considered an "Actor" with a capital A; go to the theater. Riggan decides to put on a production of a Raymond Carver play, but as the play's production runs into more and more troubles, Riggan starts to lose his mind, continually being haunted by hallucinatory images of his superhero alter ego. The extremely "meta" storyline of Birdman, which closely mimics Keaton's own real life career as the first ever thespian to portray Batman, has been a critics darling of the awards season. In fact, with the possible exception of Richard Linklater's Boyhood, there has been no movie so warmly embraced by the critics community and awards bodies as Birdman, and above all other elements (along with Emmanuel Lubezki's "one shot" photography), Keaton's performance has been singled out as the highlight of the film. While riffing on yourself might be too awkward to attempt for many ego-driven actors, Keaton attacks the challenge with palpable enthusiasm, and this all-in attack has seen Keaton reaping in awards. If things do go his way, Keaton will have bagged the award from a first time nom, but the win itself is not totally in the bag. While Keaton's performance is beloved, it is not the type of performance that is so universally acclaimed that it is impossible to imagine any other actor winning. The question though is whether any other actor can muster up enough support to pull off the upset, which, at least at this point, doesn't look very likely. The phrase "Michael Keaton, Oscar-winner," may be a real phrase very soon. How would you break down this year's uber-competitive Best Actor race? Do you think these five actors are the ones that will make it to the showdown, or do you think some other performances will sneak into the lineup? Let us know in the comments section below.
A film fanatic at a very young age, starting with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies and gradually moving up to more sophisticated fare, at around the age of ten he became inexplicably obsessed with all things Oscar. With the incredibly trivial power of being able to chronologically name every Best Picture winner from memory, his lifelong goal is to see every Oscar nominated film, in every major category, in the history of the Academy Awards.
