And while we're on the subject, why didn't Forest Whitaker get nominated for anything?
Well, I was going to say it might have had something to do with his shaky accent, which at one point veered into South African and a few others, but then I realised that the ears of the American members of the Academy Awards are likely not attuned to any other accents than their own.
"It's too late Always has been, always will be
Too late."

Dunno. He was
so
good in this part. What a performance.

And while we're on the subject, why didn't Forest Whitaker get nominated for anything?
Given the present furore, I had to chuckle at this one.

Rea had a lot of screentime and really was the heart of the film in a performance Andrew Sarris called 'one of the most brilliantly understated performances of recent years', and to be honest Davidson should count himself lucky he received
any
kind of awards recognition, though he did have some nice moments here and there.

I'm guessing that most of the people making comments here have no idea what the difference is between being the lead role and what a supporting character is (hint: it doesn't have a thing at all to do with who gave the better performance, or gimmicks.)
The bad news is you have houseguests. There is no good news.

I agree. I believe they had to change or modify the campaigning rules for the Academy Awards because of the way they campaigned for Shakespeare in Love.

Put it down to the Miramax marketing campaign. Those boys are masters at marketing stuff for the Oscars. Harvey and co. are very good at it.

Davidson role was more of a gimmick then anything else. He was good but it was a gimmick. Rea was in that movie from beginning to end.

I think it's because Rea had the lead role and Davidson had the supporting role.

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I think Rea was much better than Davidson. I dont see what was so complex about Davidson's performance in all honesty, I think Neil Jordan's writing deserves most of the credit than Davidson's acting, sure he did a great job of building up to the twist, but I never once forgot that I was watching an inexperienced actor act. His emotional scenes come across as forced in my opinion and not geniune.
Plus Rea had to carry the film from beginning to end and had a much harder job than Davidson in the sense that Davidson had the more flashy role and Rea had to capture your interest doing much less, but Rea carried the film from beginning to end and never once had a false moment in his acting.