10 Breakthrough Performances of This Awards Season
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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2013 10 breakthrough performances of this awards season his year’s contenders include a French (Chiwetel Ejiofor) to pick up the whip himself. formance from Exarchopoulos that is all open teenager who could become the third- “I fully trusted him,” she said of Fassbender, nerves and emotion. The actress admits that Tyoungest Best Actress nominee in histo- “and I needed to trust him in order to do the the lengthy sexual encounters between her ry (Adele Exarchopoulos, “Blue Is the Warmest things I did with him.” and co-star Lea Seydoux were draining to Color”) and an American theater veteran shoot. “There are sex scenes in every movie enjoying her breakthrough film role at the Oscar Isaac but in this one they are as long as the other age of 83 (June Squibb, “Nebraska”). There’s ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’ scenes,” Exarchopoulos told TheWrap. an actor whose performance completes a Oscar Isaac’s fallback career as a musician remarkable career transformation from rom- paid off big time for his breakthrough role in Daniel bruhl com leading man to indie star (Matthew “Inside Llewyn Davis,” a bleak Coen brothers ‘Rush’ McConaughey, “Dallas Buyers Club”), and tale about a folk singer who is his own worst As the Formula 1 racing legend Niki there’s his co-star, who abandoned acting six Lauda in Ron Howard’s “Rush,” German years ago to play rock ‘n’ roll, selling 10 mil- actor Daniel Bruhl stands toe-to-toe with lion albums before he picked up another the towering, bronzed beauty of Chris script (Jared Leto). Hemsworth as playboy racer James Hunt. There are actors who’ve been on success- Bruhl, who also appears in with WikiLeaks ful TV shows but haven’t had breakout film movie “The First Estate,” makes us feel for a This photo released by Sony - Columbia roles (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael B Jordan, Brie brusque, driven, abrasive and often unlik- Pictures shows Barkhad Abdi in a scene Larson and Idris Elba), actors better known able guy whose rivalry with Hunt and recov- from the film, “Captain Phillips. overseas (Daniel Bruhl), an actor who’s spent ery from a horrific car crash forms the back- TheWrap, “I don’t know what kind of person decades pursuing pop-culture domination bone of the movie. everywhere except movies (Oprah Winfrey), I would be.” Picked out of an open casting another who’s been seen more often at the call of Somalis living in Minneapolis, the Chiwetel Ejiofor erstwhile limo driver was chosen, director film festival he started, Sundance, than in a ‘12 Years a Slave’ This film image released by CBS FIlms Paul Greengrass told TheWrap, for his “mix- movie career he largely walked away from If Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave” is a (Robert Redford). shows Oscar Isaac in a scene from “Inside ture of menace and humanity.” Abdi has devastating experience, a good deal of the And we have some who’ve come out of Llewyn Davis.” — AP since landed a Hollywood agent. credit must go to the 36-year-old British nowhere, or close to it: Barkhad Abdi was a Somalian immigrant living in Minneapolis enemy in Greenwich Village circa 1961. The June Squibb when he answered an ad looking for Somalis story is loosely based on folkie Dave Van ‘Nebraska’ to audition for “Captain Phillips.” Adele Ronk, and Isaac, a Juilliard-trained actor and She spent more than 30 years acting Exarchopoulos only had a handful of movies part-time musician, learned three of his songs onstage before Woody Allen cast her in her to her credit when she won the lead in “Blue for his audition, impressing the Coen brothers first movie, “Alice.” But Alexander Payne Is the Warmest Color.” Lupita Nyong’o was and musical director T Bone Burnett. He stars cast June Squibb as Jack Nicholson’s wife in fresh out of Yale Drama School when she opposite Carey Mulligan and Justin “About Schmidt” in 2002, and a decade later auditioned for Steve McQueen for “12 Years a Timberlake, but make no mistake about it: the he told her, “I have another icon for you.” As Slave.” Of the 40 actors high on the charts of Guatemalan-born actor carries the film as the Bruce Dern’s wife in “Nebraska,” she’s a predicted nominees in the acting categories, melancholy songsmith who had the bad luck long-suffering, tart-tongued scene-stealer. 20 have never been nominated - and of the to be a decent performer in a Village scene “The script was so beautiful, and so surpris- ones who have been there before, Redford that is about to be upended by Bob Dylan. “It ing,” she told TheWrap. “I was amazed at hasn’t been nominated for acting in 40 years, was an interesting challenge, because you the stuff I got to say.” Bruce Dern for 35 years, Winfrey for 28, Emma had to develop a character who really only This image released by Starz shows Thompson for 18, Tom Hanks for 13. So wel- shows his soul in his songs,” Isaac told Chiwetel Ejiofor in “Dancing on the Edge.” Brie Larson come back and pleased to meet you, class of TheWrap. “Once I got the part, I kept develop- ‘Short Term 12’ 2013. ing it, changing things, figuring out where his actor of Nigerian ancestry whose quiet dig- Brie Larson did her Skype audition for motor was and thinking a lot about the come- nity is at the center of nearly every frame. “Short Term 12 from the Georgia set of dy of resilience.” But Chiwetel Ejiofor initially resisted playing “The Spectacular Now,” impressing director Solomon Northrup, a real-life free man from Adele exarchopoulos Destin Daniel Cretton when she told him the North who was drugged, abducted and that she’d volunteered at local abused-kids ‘Blue Is the Warmest Color’ sold into slavery in pre-Civil War Louisiana. Director Abdellatif Kechiche came to home to give her a leg up in playing a coun- “The script was extraordinary, but it led me selor in Cretton’s movie. (She neglected to teenage French actress Adele Exarchopoulos down a route of questioning whether I during the shoot and asked her whether she tell him that as a non-resident, she’d been could do that,” he told TheWrap. “I realized rejected.) “I was scared that he would find would mind if he changed the name of her that it wasn’t about all the big issues, it was character to Adele, believing it would help me underqualified for the role,” she told telling the story of this one extraordinary TheWrap. “I had never been the lead of cement the connection between actress and man and this extraordinary experience.” character. It worked. The movie, titled “The something before, and never played a role This image released by Fox Searchlight Story of Adele: that was remotely like this - which is why I Michael B Jordan thought I was perfect for it.” shows Lupita Nyong’o in a scene from “12 Chapter 1 and 2 in France, is a searing ‘Fruitvale Station’ Years A Slave.” look at first love, with a sexually explicit per- When Michael B Jordan first met the fam- David Oyelowo ily of Oscar Grant, the young Oakland man Breakthroughs ‘Lee Daniels’ The Butler’ who was shot and killed by Bay Area transit Lupita Nyong’o Born in England to Nigerian parents, David ‘12 Years a Slave’ police on New Year’s Eve, 2009, he had one Oyelowo joins ‘12 Years a Slaveísî Ejiofor and Born in Mexico but raised in Kenya, Lupita advantage: They were fans of “The Wire,” Nyongío as non-American actors in films Nyong’o landed her breakthrough role in “12 the HBO show on which Jordan had about the African-American experience. As Years a Slave” shortly after graduating from appeared as a drug dealer. “That helped,” Louis Gaines, the increasingly radicalized son Yale School of Drama. Nyong’o, who directed Jordan told TheWrap. “Some of them even of Forest Whitakerís title character, Oyelowo is the Kenyan documentary “In My Genes” called me ‘Wallace’ for the first few days I the driving force behind much of the filmís before heading to New Haven, plays Patsey in was around.” drama. Steve McQueen’s brutal story about a free The stage-trained, 37-year-old Oyelowo man dragged into slavery. In a movie filled Barkhad Abdi insisted on playing the character at all ages with harrowing, hard-to-watch scenes, the This photo released by courtesy of ‘Captain Phillips’ rather than letting Daniels use a younger most horrifying sequence is the one in which Sundance Selects shows Lea Seydoux, left, Barkhad Adbi’s family fled the Somali actor for the teenage scenes, working out a Michael Fassbender’s cruel master, driven by as Emma and Adele Exarchopoulos as Civil War for Yemen in the early ‘90s - and if regimen that included getting lots of sleep lust and self-loathing, takes a whip to Patsey’s Adele in the film, “Blue Is the Warmest they hadn’t won a lottery to receive a visa the night before he played a teen ó and much bare back and orders Solomon Northrup Color,” directed by Abdellatif Kechiche. to the United States, the 28-year-old told less before playing older.— AP.