UPDATE: (Feb. 24): Marion Cotillard has won the 2008 Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.
French actress Marion Cotillard is having a heck of A Good Year. Star of the 2007 biopic of legendary French cabaret singer Edith Piaf, Cotillard has already won a Golden Globe award as Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy for her portrayal of The Songbird in La Vie en Rose (La Môme).
The Nominations
Cotillard has also been nominated in the Best Actress category for the 80th annual Academy Awards, for the Screen Actors Guild awards, for the César du Cinema awards and for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards for her breakout role.
In 2004, she picked up a César (French Oscar) for Best Supporting Actress for her role in A Very Long Engagement (Un long dimanche de fiançailles), and she charmed audiences with her mischievous challenge to co-star Guillaume Canet, “cap ou pas cap? (you up for it or no?)” in 2003's Love Me if You Dare (Jeux d'Enfants).
The Competition
Cotillard's competition at the Oscars -- Cate Blanchett for Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Julie Christie for Away From Her, Laura Linney for The Savages and Ellen Page for Juno -- is nothing if not formidable. Still, she may only have two real competitors.
Cate Blanchett is unlikely to win because:
- she's already lost the Oscar for playing this exact same character
- Helen Mirren did the rounds last year with “The Queen,” another Elizabeth
- Academy voters are likely as tired of voting for Elizabeths as viewers are of watching Elizabeths
Laura Linney is, in terms of awards, one of our most underappreciated actresses, but this doesn't seem likely to be her year, mostly because her film is so obscure, even for art-house viewers.
This leaves Julie Christie, who already has a Best Actress Oscar for 1965's Darling (and who has just won the SAG award), and relative newcomer Ellen Page as Cotillard's closest competition.
The Chances
Since the Oscars' inception, only one French actress has taken home the statue in this category: Simone Signoret for the 1959 UK film, Room at the Top. Signoret was the first actress in a non-American film to win in this category.
She opened the door, the following year, for the first and, to date, only actress to ever win a Best Actress Oscar for a role in a foreign-language film: Sophia Loren in the 1960 Italian film, La Ciociara (Two Women).
Still, this has been a year of near-precedents in many arenas, and Cotillard has the good fortune to be in one of only two biopics in the category.
Historically, film depictions of legends, especially musical ones, have proven to be Oscar gold.
Lastly, but not to be ignored, she has already snagged the Golden Globe, long held to be a good harbinger of Oscar chances – although there have been some quite notable exceptions in recent years, of course.
Six Degrees of Marion Cotillard at the 80th Annual Oscars
- Javier Bardem, nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role in No Country for Old Men, will star opposite Cotillard as her husband in the upcoming film Nine.
- She starred opposite Russell Crowe in A Good Year; two of Crowe’s movies, 3:10 to Yuma (Best Music, Best Sound) and American Gangster (Best Art Direction, Best Supporting Actress), are up for Oscars this year.
- Jérémie Renier, who stars in Atonement (nominated for Best Film, although neither the film's director nor either of its lead actors has been given the Oscar nod), has worked with Cotillard twice: in Fair Play and Dikkenek; Dominique Pinon, who also had a role in Dikkenek, appeared with Cotillard in A Very Long Engagement.
- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (La Scaphandre et le papillon), nominated for Best Director, Editor, Cinematographer and Adapted Screenplay, stars three actors who have worked with Cotillard: Emmanuelle Seigner, Mathieu Amalric and Jean-Pierre Cassel.
- Mrs. Roman Polanski, Emmanuelle Seigner, played Titine, Piaf's early-childhood mother substitute (and working girl) in La Vie en Rose (Seigner also worked with Best Actor nominee for Sweeney Todd, Johnny Depp, in The Ninth Gate);
- Mathieu Amalric and Cotillard worked together in Comment je me disputee...ma vie sexuelle, where Cotillard had a small part.
- Jean-Pierre Cassel worked with Cotillard in Fair Play.
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