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Much as every actor probably wants to win one, an Oscar is not always a boon to an actor's career. Sometimes, the pressure of being thrust suddenly into the spotlight can cause some actors to make poor choices and curse their post-Oscar careers (F. Murray Abraham, Kim Basinger). For others, being awarded the Oscar is merely Phase One of a popular backlash that can last several years (Julia Roberts, Gwyneth Paltrow). But on some rare occasions, an actor won really and truly deserves it wins the award. And it just feels right, and only good comes of it. This was the case in 1997, when Frances McDormand won the Best Actress Oscar for playing Marge Gunderson in Fargo.
For many Oscar-watchers (me), 1997 was just about the last year one could possibly care about. For instance, the Best Picture nominees were four intelligent, well-made movies that were a pleasure to watch, and Jerry Maguire. The evening got off to an unfortunate start when, in the very first award of the night, Cuba Gooding Jr. of Maguire stole the Best Supporting Actor award from Fargo's William H. Macy, but then proceeded to caper about the stage like a lemur on crank. But for the most part, the Oscars were -- unlike pretty much every other Academy Awards ceremony in the years that followed -- not an egregious travesty of cinematic justice. And Frances McDormand's Best Actress win -- even amid a field of deserving winners -- was one of the high points of the evening.
For one thing, her win -- like those of Billy Bob Thornton (Best Adapted Screenplay for Sling Blade), Geoffrey Rush (Best Actor for Shine), and McDormand's husband Joel Coen and brother-in-law Ethan Coen (Best Original Screenplay for Fargo), it represented Hollywood's welcoming a whole crowd of outsiders into the fold. For another, it was a righteous victory in which the best woman won. (Plus, remember that acceptance speech, in which she thanked Ethan Coen for making her an actress, and Joel Coen for making her a woman? That's what you call cool, friend. Take that, Susan Sarandon.)
Best of all, Frances McDormand's Oscar win was neither the flame setting off her career immolation, nor the catalyst for an audience backlash. Fortunately for her fans, winning the Oscar only changed McDormand's career for the better. She continued getting the kind of good, interesting roles she'd been playing since she made her film début in Blood Simple. Only maybe now they were a tiny bit...better. There weren't suddenly way more of them or anything -- she didn't pull a Helen Hunt by starring in four crappy movies in a span of three months -- but they were opposite bigger stars, or in the service of bigger directors, or McDormand's roles were more prominent within higher-profile projects. Parts that, a couple of years earlier, would have automatically gone to Joan Allen now were given to McDormand -- both upstanding noble woman roles (as in Paradise Road and City by the Sea), and tough yet sweet maternal types (as in Madeline and Almost Famous). Once she won the Oscar, in short, McDormand worked in more studio pictures and fewer indies. (Though she didn't give up indies entirely, and thank god, since if she had we wouldn't get to enjoy her in Lone Star and The Man Who Wasn't There.)
Might this have happened to McDormand even if she hadn't won that Oscar in 1997? Sure. She had been quietly building a résumé of varied, intriguing roles. Like Meryl Streep or Sissy Spacek, McDormand wasn't constantly in our faces, but simply showed up for work, kicked some ass, and called it a day, returning afterward to a private life about which we know very little.
But the combination of an Oscar and a great instinct for choosing her projects has made McDormand a Hollywood A-lister who never wastes our time: she seems only to do work she believes in, and her belief in her work makes us believe in it, too.
And while we're happy with the direction her career has taken over the years, and have no major complaints -- after all, what do you call a woman who's appeared opposite Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, and Tim Robbins except a movie star? -- imagine a world in which Frances McDormand was even a little more famous. Maybe she, rather than Michelle Pfeiffer, would be playing the murderous mom in White Oleander. Or Virginia Woolf in The Hours. Or the boxing promoter in Against the Ropes. Doesn't that sound like a great place to live?
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