Lily Gladstone is hoping to follow in the Oscar-winning footsteps of Nicole Kidman

Lily Gladstone made Oscar history as the first Native American to be nominated in the Best Actress category for her role in Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.” While we thought she would try her luck in the featured category, she opted to campaign in lead. Her importance to the plot suggests that she is a co-star, despite her screen-time (especially in the second half of the film and compared to that of Leonardo DiCaprio).

It isn’t often that a performance that could go supporting is campaigned as a lead, but it’s happened in the past – even the very recent past.

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Last year, Michelle Williams was at one point the odds-on favorite to win Best Supporting Actress for “The Fabelmans.” Though her reason for going lead in anyone’s guess, some suggest that wasn’t too dissimilar to Gladstone’s case. While the “Flower Moon” team want to make clear that Mollie’s Burkhart (Gladstone) arc is at the center of the film’s story, Spielberg had made clear that “The Fabelmans” was truly about his mother more than anything else, framing Williams as a co-lead of the film. Williams has under an hour of screen-time in “The Fabelmans,” or just over a third of the film’s runtime. 

One example of an actor who was successful at taking home an Oscar in a lead category despite their lack of screen-time was Anthony Hopkins for “The Silence of the Lambs” in 1992. Appearing on screen for less than 25 minutes in a two-hour film, campaigning Hopkins in lead may have been a risk. But with Hannibal Lecter being one of the most recognizable and beloved film villains in history, it’s not a surprise in retrospect that he was able to dominate the awards season conversation in 1992. Because of this switch, “The Silence of the Lambs” became one of only a handful of films to win all Big Five categories. Lead Oscar winners with even less screen time than Hopkins include Nicole Kidman in “The Hours” (2003) and David Niven in “Separate Tables” (1959). Both tallied a mere 23 minutes of their respective films. 

SEENew York Film Critics Circle Awards validate Lily Gladstone and hail ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ as Best Picture

Despite the success these actors had in competing against leading performances in their respective years, the far more common approach is for a leading performance to compete in a supporting category. In some cases, it’s to avoid co-leads competing against each other for the same film. This was true for “The Favourite,” where Emma Stone had the most screen-time in the film but was instead downgraded as a supporting performance, allowing Olivia Colman to compete on her own in (and eventually win) the Lead Actress category in 2019. Brad Pitt was also arguably a co-lead in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” when he won in 2020, sharing nearly as much screen-time as Best Lead Actor nominee DiCaprio. 

Another reason a lead actor may be campaigned in a supporting category is so they can submit performances for two different films, since under academy rules an actor can’t compete against himself or herself in a category. This happened when Jamie Foxx, co-lead in the film “Collateral,” competed for Best Supporting Actor to make room for his performance in “Ray” to be eligible for a Lead Actor nomination (and, ultimately, win in 2005). This academy rule also created confusion during the 2008-09 awards season for Kate Winslet’s lead performances in “The Reader” and “Revolutionary Road.” Her campaign originally planned for her to compete as a supporting actress for “The Reader,” since she has 10 minutes less screen-time than David Kross in that film. But ultimately, academy voters decided to snub her for “Revolutionary Road” altogether, nominating her as a lead actress instead for “The Reader,” which earned her a well-deserved Best Actress Academy Award in 2009.

SEELily Gladstone: ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ ‘completely changed me as a human being’

The other main reason a campaign team may downgrade their actor from lead to supporting is, clearly, to face softer competition. After all, an actor with significantly more screen-time than their competitors is thought to have an edge with Oscar voters. Alicia Vikander infamously won Best Supporting Actress for “The Danish Girl” in 2016 despite having as much screen time as co-nominees Rachel MacAdams (“Spotlight”) and Kate Winslet (“Steve Jobs”) combined. Ironically, Vikander won the Oscar over Rooney Mara, who was also the lead in her film “Carol” but was placed in supporting so as not to have to compete against Cate Blanchett’s performance for the same film. 

SEE Martin Scorsese praises Lily Gladstone’s ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ performance: ‘The eyes say it all’

Other examples of Supporting Actor/Actress winners who are seen as being leads of their films include Viola Davis for “Fences” in 2017 (reprising a role for which she won lead actress at the Tonys), Tatum O’Neal for “Paper Moon” in 1974 (a role that saw young O’Neal boast over an hour of screen time) and Mahershala Ali for “Green Book” in 2019 (the longest supporting actor-winning performance ever). 

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