
By Lars Trodson
This year, two actors have been nominated in the lead role category for playing real people: Frank Langella as President Nixon in “Frost/Nixon” and Sean Penn as Harvey Milk in “Milk,” and one actor in the supporting category, Josh Brolin as Dan White, also in "Milk." This follows an interesting trend in the movies of the past decade or so -- where the portrayals of historic figures has often paved the way toward Oscar gold.

Well, the facts don't lie. You decide:


There have also been nominations for playing real-life people that no one has ever heard of, such as Paul Giamatti playing Joe Gould in “Cinderella Man” and Judi Dench in “Mrs. Henderson Presents” -- they certainly qualify, but it's also not quite the same thing.
That’s between the years 2000 and now. I randomly picked 1940-1949 to see if there was a similar pattern. Not even close to the numbers of more recent years:

Some of these portrayals are of people in such a distant past one could hardly expect them to be historically or physically accurate, of course. (The same can be said of some of the more modern roles, too. Who knows how James Barrie -- Depp’s role -- really sounded or acted?) But I also did a quick search from 1930 -- 1939 (Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian; Paul Muni as Emile Zola) and then again from 1960 -- 1969 (Greer Garson as Eleanor Roosevelt; Debbie Reynolds as “The Unsinkable Molly Brown”; Faye Dunaway as Bonnie Parker) and found the same sparse sprinkling of historic portrayals among the nominations. In the 1960s there were probably fewer historic portrayals than any other decade, it seems. During these two decades, anyone hardly ever won for playing real people, by the way.
It’s hard to say what this means. I thought Sean Penn was at his loosest, charming best in “Milk”, so it could be that these real-life roles are a terrific source of inspiration. Or it could be that we don’t trust our judgment any more over what is an honest, naturally felt portrayal unless we have some idea of the real-life story behind it.
It may be no coincidence that this age of reality movie portraits more or less coincides with the era of the memoir -- both real and fake. Writers now seem to always choose writing an autobiography when fictionalized accounts would once do.
And it is no secret that some writers have written fiction but were successful in passing the writing off as fact. It is as though no one is any longer convinced that readers -- or viewers -- will "believe" a story unless we are told they're true.