The elderly and widowed Harry Coombes and his cat were on screen for 101 minutes so that Art Carney, who played him, won his first and only Oscar for the film Harry and Tonto. On the other hand, Judi Dench only had 6 minutes of acting in the role of Queen Elizabeth I of England to win the same statuette for Shakespeare in love.
They are two extreme examples, in the category of best leading actor (Carney) and best supporting actress (Dench), but they illustrate the variability of the cost of the statuettes: Oscars have been given to supporting performances that occupied more than 67% of the awards. the film and there are protagonists awarded for appearing in just 20% of the footage, according to EL PAÍS analysis of the times compiled in Screen Time Central.
Below, a review of the cost in time of the coveted statuettes throughout the history of the gala, which reaches its 96th edition with the main performances of Carey Mulligan and Colman Domingo as the closest to the average of the winners in their categories.
The secondary ones are cheaper, but with exceptions
No Oscar winner monopolizes the screen like Carney did in Harry and Tonto: He was present in 87% of the film and his biggest absence lasts only 40 seconds. However, in absolute numbers, Vivien Leigh is untouchable: she spent two hours and 23 minutes in the shoes of Scarlett O'Hara during the almost four hours of footage of gone With the Wind; 61% of the film.
Leigh's presence in this film is only slightly above average for an award-winning or nominated lead performance: leading actors or actresses typically accumulate 57% of screen time (67 minutes on average).
Among the rest of the cast, presence falls by half: the average duration of the award-winning performances is 31 minutes (25 more than Judi Dench needed) while those that do not make it past the nomination fall to 27 minutes (25 % and 22%, respectively).
It is rare that in the same edition the supporting winners perform more than the main ones, but it has happened in eight galas. The last in 2006, when Jennifer Hudson in the cast of Dreamgirls He surpassed Helen Mirren's 47 minutes by 4 minutes starring in The Queen.
And this year? Cillian Murphy and Jodie Foster would be historically long Oscars
In this edition, the performances whose duration is closest to the average of those awarded throughout history are those of Carey Mulligan and Colman Domingo in the main performances section, and those of Da'Vine Joy Randolf and Ryan Gosling among the secondary ones.
But there are two other performers whose Oscars would be historically expensive. If they awarded Cillian Murphy for her 113 minute starring role in Oppenheimerhis would become the third most demanding Oscar—in time—in history in this category, only behind Charlton Heston (121 minutes) in Ben Hur and Daniel Day Lewis in Wells of ambition (117 minutes). The same would happen with Jodie Foster's 60 Minutes in Nyad: she would enter the supporting actress podium just over 5 minutes behind Tatum O'Neal in paper moon and Patty Duke in The miracle of Anne Sullivan.
Leading actresses regain ground
So far this decade, leading actresses have bridged a gap that has marked almost the entire history of the Oscars. Now they perform, on average, 5 minutes more than men, but in the 2000s they reached 16 minutes less, with extremes such as Day-Lewis' 117 minutes in Wells of ambition and the very brief role of Nicole Kidman in The hours: 23 and a half minutes.
In the case of supporting actors, the gap is smaller and was almost equal in the 90s, but it remains open, with a seven-minute difference between actors and actresses.
More screen time is better for secondary children
Arriving at this Sunday's gala with the longest (or shortest) performance among the nominees does not seem especially decisive for the leading actors. More than half of the awards have distinguished performances that were between the extremes.
For supporting actors, acting a few more minutes can make a difference: three out of every ten Oscar winners in this category won their statuette with performances that exceeded their opponents' in time.
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