Kieran Culkin wins Best Supporting Actor Oscar, making it a clean sweep of awards season
After romping through Oscar season by running the precursor awards table — including last week at the SAG Awards and the Independent Spirits — Kieran Culkin was never going to lose the Academy Award for his performance as the spirited but tortured Benji Kaplan in Jesse Eisenberg's seriocomic buddy pic A Real Pain. And on Sunday, he didn't, as everyone found out shortly after Conan O'Brien finished his monologue. The more pertinent question was whether he would appear in person to claim his trophy, after being AWOL at the BAFTA, Critics Choice, and Spirit awards.
And once it was clear Culkin was actually in the building at the Dolby Theater, it became a guessing game of "What will Kieran say this time," given his freewheeling, unfiltered, say-whatever-pops-into-his-head penchant.
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The audience braced itself for Kieran to let loose. And then, he did — complete with a bleep or two thanks to network censors.
"Oh my God, that's crazy," he began. He looked genuinely blown away during the first 30 seconds of his speech. After calling out fellow nominee and Succession bro Jeremy Strong for his performance and chastising himself for singling out just a single nominee, Culkin gave heartfelt thanks to his manager of 30 years, then thanked the man who wrote, directed, and costarred in the film that brought him his Oscar, Eisenberg. "You're a genius," Culkin said. "I'll never say that to your face, and I'll never say it again, so soak it up. Now I've gotta speed this up because I don't want to disappoint [John] Lithgow over there," referring to a bit in O'Brien's monologue.
Culkin then spent the rest of time telling a story about his wife, Jazz Charton, and how she promised to bear him a fourth child (not to mention a third one, as they currently have two) if he won an Oscar. "I held my hand out, she shook it. So, love of my life, ye of little faith ... let's get cracking on those kids."
Meanwhile, backstage in the press room, Culkin was asked to sum up his feelings in such a moment of triumph.
"Uh, I don't know how this feels," he admitted. "I'm not fully inside my body right now. I mean, I'm trying my best to be present." He then fielded a question about why he nearly said no to A Real Pain. "It was because it was going to take me away from my kids for a month," he replied. "Then I got talked into it. I'm, very glad I was."
What did the role he played in the film teach him about himself? "Oh, that's too heavy a question," he said. "I like to think I have it a little more together than that guy."
In case you missed them, here were a couple of Culkin's tragically few but eminently memorable greatest acceptance hits during this awards cycle:
At the National Board of Review gala where the perpetually offbeat actor won in January, he began his speech by spitting out his gum and handing it to Real Pain director and costar Eisenberg, who was standing beside him onstage. He then proceeded to talk about flying a red eye to get to the show and having ingested coffee and whiskey and napping and of this all contributing to his bad breath — hence the need for the gum. "And so I went to the bathroom and there's the bathroom attendant, which is like totally, that shouldn't exist anymore. It's freaking weird, right. There's a guy that's there that you give money to so you can pee. It's f--king weird. And I gave him money for the gum, which wasn't open, and he gave me a toothpick to open it with..."
At the SAG Awards last Sunday, Culkin began his acceptance by commenting, stream-of-consciousness style, about the weight of the trophy itself. "Thank you, SAG-AFTRA, for this incredibly heavy award," Culkin said. "I don't think anyone could hold this for 45 seconds — which is the allotted time, Adrien Brody. ... There was no reason to take that shot. I love you. It's a joke. You take your time because I will because I didn't think of anything."
The man was just getting warmed up.
"All right, moving on, I see the clock ticking. Moving on. I've got to say something here. Believe it or not, this actually means a lot to me. It's hard to be sincere after that, or in general." Indeed, sincerity is not Culkin's strong suit, which is the very definition of his considerable charm. "But hey, it's a huge honor. Thirteen, 12, 11 ... I haven't said anything. I do want to talk about one actor. Five seconds. Jesse Eisenberg. He's a great actor and a great director. He cast me in this movie without auditioning me or seeing my work in anything. He cast me because his sister told him to. I want to thank his sister Hallie for thinking of me and putting my name in her stupid brother's ear."
The speech concluded with a series of rapid-fire thank-yous, punctuated by wife Jazz "for giving me my favorite people in the world." Culkin also thanked his mother.
It would certainly have been shocking if anyone but Culkin had carted off the Oscar. In the 30 years that the Screen Actors Guild Awards have existed, the SAG winner for film supporting actor has copped the Academy Award 21 times — already not a bad percentage. However, the two ceremonies have matched up considerably more recently in the category lockstep: eight years in a row and nine times in the past 10 years. The only time the SAG winner in the category has failed to win the Oscar over the past decade came in 2016 when Idris Elba triumphed at SAG for Beasts of No Nation while Mark Rylance was victorious on Oscar night for Bridge of Spies (in a field that did not include Elba, who the Academy snubbed). The SAG winner has missed only twice for Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars in 17 years, the other time being in 2013.
Over the last five years, the supporting actor victors all have doubled up at the SAG Awards and Oscars: Brad Pitt (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), Daniel Kaluuya (Judas and the Black Messiah), Troy Kotsur (CODA), Ke Huy Quan (Everything Everywhere All at Once), and last year Robert Downey Jr. (Oppenheimer).
Culkin just made it nine years in a row. But arguably, none of the previous eight carried the same uncommon speechy magnetism.
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