As you probably know, Leonardo DiCaprio recently won his first Academy Award for his work in The Revenant.
While no one is denying that DiCaprio is a great actor, many have questioned if he really deserved the award for a performance that basically just required him to run around the woods with snot frozen in his beard for two and a half hours.
Most of the nay-saying came in the form of those whiny op-eds from anonymous Oscar voters that seem to be everywhere the week before the awards, but now the shade is coming from a much more unexpected source: fellow actor and all-around genius Jack Black.
It seems Black (rightly) believes that the prize should’ve gone to his Kung-Fu Panda 3 co-star Bryan Cranston who was sadly overlooked for his fantastic work in Trumbo.
“He [Cranston] was never going to win it against Leo DiCap in The Revenant,” Black said during a recent interview with The Daily Mail.
“Bryan Cranston is a better actor. You heard it here. Bryan Cranston is better [at] acting than Leo DiCap. But, Leo DiCap was like dying a lot, he was like wheezing and coughing blood. That’s Oscar. That’s what you’ve got to do.”
Believe it or not, Black wasn’t done going in on Leo.
When the interviewer suggested that Black should’ve been nominated for his performance in 2011’s Bernie, Black responded:
“Thank you. Why didn’t I get an Oscar nomination for that? Oh you know why, I think Leo DiCap took my spot. Because that was the year he had that really bad movie that got Oscar nominated. What was that, where he like played a president that was kind of bald. Did you see that?”
He’s referring to J. Edgar, and he’s right in assessing it as terrible, which is probably why it was one of the few recent DiCaprio films that didn’t earn him a nomination.
When the interviewer pointed that out, Black replied, “He didn’t? Okay, it was a different one that I did, that obviously he shouldn’t have got a homage.”
Obviously, Black is being a little tongue-in-cheek here (though he should’ve realized that might not come across in a print interview) but his point is a valid one.
Sometimes it seems like the acting Oscars are more about who suffered the most and who has the biggest name than who gave the best performance.
Of course, if Leo hadn’t won, he would’ve been raped by a bear for nothing, which would’ve been tragic.