Nominations 2017

We first noticed Hailee Steinfeld in the Coen Brothers’ True Grit, all of 13 years old and standing her own opposite acting giants like Jeff Bridges, Josh Brolin and Matt Damon. In writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig’s The Edge of Seventeen she offers a bravura performance of a different kind, exploring and exposing the emotional chaos of a very smart, very bright teenager in the punishing universe of high school.

In a key scene from Warren Beatty’s Rules Don’t Apply, Lily Collins’ Marla Mabrey, a young would-be star under contract with the powerful Howard Hughes (played by Beatty), plays the piano and sings a tune she had composed. Lily, daughter of popstar Phil Collins, was, she admitted, “very nervous.

“I was 19 at the time this story takes place in Southern California, so (…) when I read the script was the first time I had read something that was placed where I was from, first of all. ”, Annette Bening shared with us, talking about the road that took her to Dorothea, mater familias of a very peculiar kind of improvised family, in 1979 Santa Barbara, CA in writer-director Mike Mills’ film.

Amy Adams, Arrival. In Denis Villeneuve’s existential sci-fi feature, Adams plays Louise Brooks, a linguist recruited by the military to facilitate a dialogue with aliens.

Reprising (and directing) on the big screen the role he played in the 2010 Broadway production of August Wilson’s celebrated play, Denzel Washington has a straightforward definition for the talkative, conflicted and baseball-obsessed Troy and the drama that unfolds around him: “It’s a story about a family that could take place at any time, about this husband’s frustration and what he chooses to do about it, the poor decisions that he makes”, he told us. “The family part of it, which is the basis of it, is universal.

Talking to us at the Cannes Film Festival, Viggo Mortensen says he smiled when he read the title of Captain Fantastic’s script. “I smiled and said, it can’t really be called that, it can’t really be serious.

Desmond Doss, a World War II Army medic, was the first man in American history to receive the Medal of Honor without firing a shot – even though this conscientious objector saved dozens of lives in one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific front, Okinawa. Andrew Garfield plays Doss with the mix of grit, sweetness and tenacity that, he says, were the real man’s essential traits: “His impetus came from knowing violence within himself and knowing his own ability to do harm to others.

Richard Loving was a shy, quiet young man from a rural community in early 1960s Virginia. No one would probably remember him today had he not fallen in love and married his neighbor Mildred Jeter.

Hand-picked first by Matt Damon – who was originally set to direct the movie – and later by writer-director Kenneth Lonergan to play Lee Chandler, the prodigal son of Manchester–By-Sea, MA, self-exiled to Boston after a life-changing event, Casey Affleck relied on his passion for the material to compose his complex performance. “This has only happened a couple of times in my life”, Affleck told us.

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