Best of 2013: Supporting Actor

Best Supporting Actor

• Barkhad Abdi for Captain Phillips, for lending invaluable, self-effacing resonance to a film that can feel overconcerned with depicting its harrowing factual details, outfitting this stock villain role with reckless desperation, sympathetic idealism, and unpredictability.

• James Franco for Spring Breakers, for finally utilizing his stuntiness and showboating to create an indelible act of star transformation, keeping Alien electric and essential even when the film is basically handed to him, and for the pistol fellatio.

• James Gandolfini for Enough Said, for his many subtle and selfless variations on bearish modesty, moving so gracefully with the generic beats and tart-ish rhythms of the script, equal amounts of bashfulness and charm, sweetness and resentment, and romantic bliss and heartbreak.

• Peter Kazungu for Paradise: Love, for gently suggesting a limit to Munga's preservation of Teresa's ideal perception of how he should love her, while managing to retain the ambiguity of whether or not he's acting entirely out of self-interest.

• Ben Mendelsohn for The Place Beyond the Pines, for keeping Robin's fluctuation between compassion and selfishness interesting where it could just as easily tip into contrivance, the sensitivity he shows around Jason, and the intelligence and experience he exudes in planning his heists.

Honorable Mentions: F. Murray Abraham, who's haunting, wise, and intuitive in Inside Llewyn Davis, earning every second of this one-scene wonder kind of role that is usually hand-delivered to other, more overembellishing Coen collaborators; Keith Stanfield for being one of two performers to successfully navigate the dubious patchwork of Short Term 12 to an emotionally honest and carefully proportioned characterization; Alec Baldwin for lending Blue Jasmine its simplest and most plausible side character, tacitly suggesting his appeal to and frustration with the titular protagonist, their relationship emerging as the film's most thoughtfully realized; Ben Foster for bordering the line between Patrick's genuine kindness and his stalker-like creepiness in Ain't Them Bodies Saints while generously keeping the central dramatic tensions at a keenly steady simmer. Outside of the states offered three more exceptional first-time performances from amateur actors that never quite top Abdi's or Kazungu's but are still honorable mention-worthy, ranging from the lived-in, slightly self-deprecating corporate fatigue of real-life pirate negotiator Gary Skjoldmose Porter in A Hijacking, the unsettling pathos provided by War Witch's antagonist-turned-ally-turned-beloved nailed with aplomb by Serge Kanyinda, and the graciously understated naturalism of Elyes Aguis in Asghar Farhadi's otherwise overstated The Past, landing, arguably, the film's most complex and frustrating character. 

I didn't forget Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club, Michael Fassbender in 12 Years a Slave or Jonah Hill in The Wolf of Wall Steet, all of whom obviously attracted a large, passionate fanbase. I just couldn't get as excited about the first two when there are far more interesting aspects to their respective films, while I thought Hill gave a frankly lazy performance, riffing on and calling attention to every odious characteristic of his character, avoiding every opportunity to make them interesting or in any way of a challenge for the actor to pull off. I'd take him in 21 Jump Street everyday over either of his nominated works (though, I am a fan of his performance in Moneyball).  They'll have to settle for their Oscar wins/nominations, I suppose. Bradley Cooper I also left off intentionally, but for different reasons than the other three. Just wait around for my Lead Actor preferences!