Annette Bening (‘Nyad’) is coming for that elusive Oscar

Jacob Sarkisian
·7 min read
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

Annette Bening is one of our finest actresses who has never won an Oscar. That could change with her new Netflix sports drama “Nyad,” which is due out on Oct. 20. The film stars Bening as Diana Nyad and charts her attempts to swim from Cuba to Florida while in her sixties. Jodie Foster co-stars as Nyad’s best friend and coach, Bonnie Stoll, and the rapport between Bening and Foster is the movie’s highlight.

Bening’s Nyad is a flawed character but one full of tenacity, commitment, drive, and belief. It makes for an easy character to root for, despite her flaws. The actress is earning some of the best reviews of her career.

More from GoldDerby

Richard Lawson (Vanity Fair) opined: “Nyad is played by Annette Bening, who trained for a year to ready herself for the physical demands of the role. It’s quite a testament to actorly commitment: This movie can’t have been fun to film, at least not for the person playing the woman who spends so much time working her way through the open ocean. Bening embodies both the grace and the unbearable strain of Nyad’s effort, its grandeur and its ugliness… Bening thoughtfully maps the character’s insecurity, the loneliness of her tunnel-visioned pursuit.”

Stephen Farber (The Hollywood Reporter) observed: “Bening has always been a performer who shunned vanity, and here she is willing to highlight Nyad’s single-mindedness and arrogance. The key relationships in the movie are Diana’s friendship with her coach, Bonnie Stoll (Jodie Foster), and with John Bartlett (Rhys Ifans), the ship captain who navigated her failed as well as her successful swims. Nyad risks alienating both of these allies with her character flaws. It is a tribute to Bening’s performance that she keeps us mesmerized by Nyad even at her most stubbornly pigheaded.”

Maureen Lee Lenker (EW) noted: “For Bening, Nyad is an undeniably juicy role, a spiky creature whose single-minded obsession with her destiny often expresses itself as brusque self-centeredness. Bening unsurprisingly put in the work, training in the pool for an entire year before filming. As Nyad, she gives a performance utterly devoid of vanity in her display of both Nyad’s exacting personality and the grueling physical toll of her training and efforts. Bening insisted on filming the bulk of the swimming scenes herself — and she gives the film its stakes with every shot of her waterlogged face, cracking lips, and sunburnt eyelids.”

As a result, Bening is very much in the conversation for Best Actress, although she is currently outside of our five predicted nominees according to our Oscars odds chart in this category: Emma Stone (“Poor Things”), Lily Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), Carey Mulligan (“Maestro”), Sandra Hüller (“Anatomy of a Fall”), and Fantasia Barrino (“The Color Purple”).

But rule the legendary Bening out at your peril. Stone, Gladstone, and Mulligan might be locks, sure, but Hüller is a European actress starring in a film not in the English language. In the last 10 years, only four performers in those types of roles have been nominated: Marion Cotillard in “Two Days, One Night” (2015), Isabelle Huppert in “Elle” (2017), Yalitza Aparicio in “Roma” (2019), and Penélope Cruz in “Parallel Mothers” (2022). That’s four nomination slots out of a possible 50 that have gone to these sorts of roles. It’s rare that it happens, so Hüller could drop out.

And Barrino is the star of “The Color Purple,” which, frankly, seems like an unknown quantity at this moment in time. It hasn’t played at any festivals, so no one is actually sure whether or not it will be the awards player we currently predict it will be. It might turn out that the film just didn’t work out, and ends up disappointing us. If that is the case, a slot opens up for another actress to get in.

Bening is on the precipice alongside Margot Robbie (“Barbie”), Greta Lee (“Past Lives”), Natalie Portman (“May December”), and Cailee Spaeny (“Priscilla”). But Bening should, arguably, be the very next in line to make it into our predicted five, for multiple reasons.

Firstly, she’s playing a real person. We know the academy likes this in their lead categories. Ana de Armas was nominated for “Blonde” earlier this year. In 2022, Kristen Stewart was nominated for “Spencer,” Nicole Kidman was nominated for “Being the Ricardos,” and Jessica Chastain won for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.” And, in 2021, Viola Davis was nominated for “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and Andra Day was nominated for “The United States vs. Billie Holiday.” Bening would be the latest actress to be nominated for playing a real person.

Another thing the academy likes is a commitment to the role, whether that be donning an accent or learning a skill or language, for example. Plenty of actresses have landed nominations in this category for doing one of those things, including Cate Blanchett for “Tár” (2023), Davis for “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” Renée Zellweger for “Judy” (winner in 2020), Margot Robbie for “I, Tonya” (2018), and Stone for “La La Land” (winner in 2017). Bening spent over a year before this movie training for the swimming scenes, becoming an expert swimmer in the process. In fact, the movie’s credits show clips of Bening training alongside the real Diana Nyad. It’s a wise move to include those clips in the credits — it will remind voters how professional and committed Bening is as an actress. They will appreciate that.

Rather more controversially, voters also admire actresses who, for lack of a better phrase, “ugly-fy” themselves for a role. Charlize Theron is the famous example. She won Best Actress in 2004 for “Monster,” while Chastain’s “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” role had a similar quality at points. The same goes for Robbie’s role in “I, Tonya.” Bening doesn’t have quite the physical transformation that Theron had in “Monster,” but her swimming scenes include Nyad’s face being swollen and stained from salt from the scene. Again, it shows a commitment to the role and a lack of vanity that her peers will appreciate.

And it’s not like Bening needs any more reasons to be appreciated. The academy loves her. She was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in 1991 for “The Grifters” before scoring three Best Actress bids: “American Beauty” in 2000, “Being Julia” in 2005, and “The Kids Are All Right” in 2011. She lost all four of those races but it shows that her peers adore her as a performer. And, while she may not win this year, voters could treat her the same way they’ve treated Glenn Close — if we can’t give you the win, we can at least give you another nomination. That’s what led to Close to landing nominations for “The Wife” (lead) in 2019 and “Hillbilly Elegy” (supporting) in 2021. And it’s what could lead Bening to her fifth nomination this year for “Nyad.”

Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Don’t miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?

SIGN UP for Gold Derby’s free newsletter with latest predictions

Best of GoldDerby

Sign up for Gold Derby's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Click here to read the full article.