From Tom Hanks Forest Gump To Cillian Murphy in OppenheimerSome of the best OscarWinning actors were given plenty of screen time to shine in their Academy-favorite performances. It’s always impressive when an actor wins an Oscar with limited screen time, as Anthony Hopkins did The silence of the lambs Or Beatrice Strait for just five minutes in NetworkBut they’re much more likely to catch the Academy’s attention if they’re on screen for the overwhelming majority of the movie. The more screen time an actor has, the more opportunities they have to wow Oscar voters.
The Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Actress tend to go to movies that essentially function as a showcase for their lead actor. Joaquin Phoenix is on screen for all but 19 minutes of Joker (And some of those minutes are end credits). Although the opening act of Forest Gump Covering the character’s childhood, where he is played by the younger Michael Conner Humphreys, Hanks is only off screen for 37 minutes of the movie. Some of the best Oscar-winning performances have plenty of breathing room to chew the scenery.
10
Art Carney in Harry and Tonto
1 hour, 40 minutes
Art Carney is best known for his role as Ed Norton in the classic sitcom The honeymoon. But later in his career, he earned an Academy Award for Best Actor for his turn as elderly widower and retired teacher Harry Coombes in Paul Mazursky’s 1974 road movie Harry and Tonto. After being kicked out of his New York City apartment, Harry decides to travel cross-country with his pet cat Tonto.
For most of the movie, Carney’s only scene partner is a cat, so he’s given a lot of time in the spotlight. Mazursky directs the film at a slow, patient pace that allows Carney’s performance to really shine. Carney’s performance would have been strong enough to earn the Academy’s attention, but Oscar voters love when a sitcom star shows off their unseen dramatic capabilities — especially when they have an hour and 40 minutes to do it.
9
Meryl Streep in Sophie’s Choice
1 hour, 41 minutes
Meryl Streep earned her fourth of a total of 21 Oscar nominations — and second of three wins — for her heartbreaking performance in Sophie’s Choice. Streep plays a Holocaust survivor who is forced to choose which of her two children will be sent to a gas chamber and killed. After she won best supporting actress for Kramer vs. KramerThis was Streep’s first Best Actress win (she later won a second Best Actress award for playing Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady).
Streep’s turn Sophie’s Choice is still one of her most affecting performances. She perfectly captures the anguish of a woman who was forced to make an unthinkable decision and cannot forgive herself for it. Peter MacNicol is technically the star of the movie, since it’s told from his character’s perspective, but Streep steals the show with an hour and 41 minutes of screen time.
8
Joaquin Phoenix in Joker
1 hour, 43 minutes
Joaquin Phoenix became the second actor after Heath Ledger to win an Oscar for playing the Clown Prince of Crime when he won Best Actor for his portrayal of Arthur Fleck in Todd Phillips’ Joker. narrative, Joker has been criticized for being derivative of Taxi driver And The king of comedyAnd thematically, it was criticized for running vigilante justice. So, Phoenix’s performance and Lawrence Sher’s gorgeous cinematography had to do a lot of heavy lifting.
Since most of the movie takes place from Arthur’s perspective – and a lot of it may happen as a hallucination in his mind – Joker Didn’t have many opportunities to cut away to other characters’ perspectives. This meant that Phoenix had plenty of time to chew the scenery; He is on screen for almost the entire movie. He appears for 103 of the 122 minutes of the film.
7
Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump
1 hour, 45 minutes
One year after his Oscar-winning turn in PhiladelphiaTom Hanks won his second consecutive Academy Award for Best Actor for playing the iconic title role in Robert Zemeckis’ Forest Gump. yet Forest Gump Hanks is on screen in almost every scene for the rest of the movie. He was out for an hour and 45 minutes.
Since Forrest tells the story to random fellow bus passengers in a framing narrative, the whole thing is told from his perspective. The movie goes wild wherever it goes. If he is sent to fight in Vietnam, it goes to Vietnam. If he becomes a ping pong prodigy, it goes to the ping pong circuit. And if he runs up and down the country several times, the film goes up and down the country several times.
6
George C. Scott in Patton
1 hour, 48 minutes
George C. Scott won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as General George S. Patton in Franklin J. Schaffner’s aptly titled biopic Patton. But he famously declined the award, and became the first actor to do so. Scott didn’t like the idea of actors competing to be the “Best” and had further participation in the Academy’s voting process. The film’s producer, Frank McCarthy, accepted the award on Scott’s behalf.
in 172 minutes, Patton is almost three hours long, and Scott is on screen for 108 of those minutes. Scott often has the screen to himself. The movie opens with Scott delivering a giant monologue with a giant American flag behind him. It’s no wonder he impressed Oscar voters enough to win an award for Best Actor – they literally couldn’t take their eyes off him.
5
Cillian Murphy at Oppenheimer
1 hour, 53 minutes
After nearly two decades of playing supporting roles in Christopher Nolan’s movies, Cillian Murphy finally landed a starring role as J. Robert Oppenheimer in Nolan’s biopic Oppenheimer. Murphy’s first lead role in a Nolan movie also scored him his first Academy Award for Best Actor. When you watch the movie, it seems like Murphy is on the screen for everyone OppenheimerBut he’s only in one hour and 53 minutes of the three-hour movie, so it’s over an hour of Oppenheimer Which does not feature Murphy at all.
Nolan puts Murphy’s mesmerizing performance front and center throughout Oppenheimer. He is more interested in showing the conflict on Oppenheimer’s face than showing the bullet-point historical events of the Manhattan Project. Murphy gets a lot of wide IMAX close-ups to really shine, and that undoubtedly earned him the Oscar.
4
Daniel Day-Lewis in there will be blood
1 hour, 57 minutes
Daniel Day-Lewis won Best Actor for his portrayal of unscrupulous oil tycoon Daniel Plainview in Paul Thomas Anderson’s historical epic. There will be blood. Day-Lewis has previously won the award for My left leg And later won it a third time for LincolnHowever There will be blood is arguably his best movie and finest performance. There will be blood is a character study above all, focusing more on Plainview’s moral decline than the growth of his business, so Day-Lewis is given plenty of screen time.
in My left legHe has 50 minutes of screen time, and in LincolnHe had an hour and 17 minutes. in There will be bloodDay-Lewis has almost as much screen time as both of her previous Oscar-winning performances combined. He’s on screen as Plainview, watching his empire grow and delivering captivating monologues for an hour and 57 minutes.
3
Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl
2 hours, 1 minute
Eight years before she won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for her track “Evergreen” from A star is bornBarbra Streisand won Best Actress for her starring role in the William Wyler musical Funny girl. Streisand plays Fanny Brice, an up-and-coming performer who ignores the producers who tell her to quit for cosmetic reasons, embraces her physical imperfections with a sense of humor, and becomes a huge star. Streisand has a total of two hours and one minute of screen time in the role of Fanny.
Funny girl Arrived at the tail end of the Golden Age of Hollywood when mega-scale roadshow musicals were going out of style. It was one of the last two-and-a-half-hour musical extravaganzas to succeed at the box office before the genre went out of style. (Technically, Streisand’s Best Actress win was tied with Katharine Hepburn for The lion in winter.)
2
Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur
2 hours, 1 minute
18 years before receiving the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, Charlton Heston won his only non-honorary Oscar. He beat Jack Lemmon and James Stewart to win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his turn as the titular Judah Ben-Hur in the big-budget religious epic Ben Hur. While Ben Hur Best remembered for the cinematic spectacle of his chariot sequence—which has influenced nearly every action filmmaker in the decades since—Heston’s performance is just as spectacular.
Much like Streisand in Funny girlHeston has two hours and one minute of screen time in Ben Hur. Part of the reason for Heston’s above-average screen time is the movie’s above-average runtime. in 212 minutes, Ben Hur is over three and a half hours long, and that’s not including the overture, the intermission, or the entr’act. Heston has plenty of time to shine.
1
Vivien Lei in Gone with the Wind
2 hours, 23 minutes
Vivien Leigh holds the record for the longest Oscar-winning performance with a whopping two hours and 23 minutes of screen time in Victor Fleming’s epic historical romance Gone with the wind. It helps that Gone with the wind is one of the longest mainstream movies ever made. It has a whopping 221 minutes of runtime – or three hours and 41 minutes – so even with two hours and 23 minutes on screen, Leigh is still gone from Gone with the wind for over an hour.
Although Gone with the wind Is problematic for its depiction of American slavery, Leigh’s Best Actress-winning performance as Scarlett O’Hara remains iconic. Leigh later won a second best actress Oscar For playing Blanche DuBois in A streetcar named desireBut Scarlett is still her defining role. She is so perfect for the part, it’s as if she was born to play it.