82nd Academy Awards Blogathon: Best Actor

Jeff Bridges – Crazy Heart, George Clooney – Up in the Air, Colin Firth – A Single Man, Morgan Freeman – Invictus, Jeremy Renner – The Hurt Locker

Every year these actor categories go one of two ways for me. Either there’s a hands down clear winner or I haven’t seen most of the films. This year, the Best Actor category is quite a fuzzy one, if not the most difficult of all the categories.

On one hand you have Jeff Bridges and his history of amazing acting coming off a Golden Globe win for Crazy Heart. On the other hand you have multiple Oscar winner Morgan Freeman playing Nelson Mendela in Invictus, and we all know how much the Academy loves a depiction of a real person.

George Clooney is at his most Cary Grant-ish in Up in the Air showing us his unmatched ability to balance dialogue and emotion equally. Colin Firth has played pretty stiff and boring characters in the past, but is boasting strong acclaim for A Single Man.

Then there’s Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker. Read more »