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Jennifer Jason Leigh will find herself at the Dolby Theater on February 28th, the lone acting nominee from Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. She’s not the favorite to win for Best Supporting Actress. Awards-handicapping site Gold Derby has her fourth-most likely to win, at 66-1 odds. Our own Oscar Grouch column is picking Kate Winslet for Steve Jobs. But for Leigh, the victory really in in the nomination, which was the first nod from the Academy in her long and accomplished career. It seems crazy to anyone who lived through the 1990s that Leigh was never Oscar nominated, as she was one of the most consistently acclaimed actresses of her generation. It’s reasonable to imagine a world where this year’s nomination was her third, fourth, even fifth.
Let’s take a quick tour through all the times in her career when Jennifer Jason Leigh should have ended up on the Academy’s ballot.
'Miami Blues' (1990)
Leigh was still in her post-Fast Times at Ridgemont High phase when she starred opposite Alec Baldwin in this darkly comedic crime flick. In the same year, she also starred in the adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.’s Last Exit to Brooklyn. Both films got JJL huge critical recognition, and she was cited as Best Supporting Actress by the New York Film Critics Circle and Boston Society of Film Critics. No dice on that Oscar nomination, though.
'Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle' (1994)
Certainly, this must have been in Oscar’s wheelhouse. Playing a legendary real-life figure Dorothy Parker in a sparkling costume drama. Leigh had critics falling all over themselves to praise her witty and wise performance. This time, it was Best Actress citations from the Chicago Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics, plus nominations at the Golden Globes and Independent Spirit Awards. Yet despite a wonky year for Best Actress — we love Susan Sarandon, but that nomination for The Client was a puzzler — JJL didn’t crack Oscar’s top 5.
'The Hudsucker Proxy' (1994)
The Coen brothers weren’t yet the Oscar favorites they are today back in 1994, which is probably part of the reason why Leigh didn’t get any traction for her sparkling pastiche of a performance as Pulitzer-winning newspaper reporter Amy Archer. The other part is that the performance proved to be pretty divisive at the time. But history has proved her detractors wrong. After all, she delivers the #3 performance in all Coen brothers movies, says we.
'Georgia' (1995)
Mare Winningham got a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her performance playing the title character — JJL’s sister — in Georgia. And as good as Winningham is in the movie, Leigh is even better, a raw sparking wire, a maddeningly self-destructive woman. The performance may well be the best of Leigh’s career, and one of the all-time great performances of a self-destructive musician (and there are many). The New York Film Critics Circle named her Best Actress — in a wildly competitive year that featured great performances by Susan Sarandon, Meryl Streep, Elisabeth Shue, Emma Thompson, and Sharon Stone — and she got an Independent Spirit Award nomination. The Oscars passed.
'The Anniversary Party' (2001)
Leigh and actor Alan Cumming co-wrote, co-directed, and co-starred in this Robert Altman-esque movie that was very well-received in indie circles. The Altman influence has been all over Leigh’s career — he produced Mrs. Parker and directed Leigh in both Short Cuts and Kansas City — and she and Cumming really nailed that cross-talky, lived-in vibe with The Anniversary Party. The Independent Spirit Awards nominated it for Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay. The Oscars passed.
