AFT Awards: Best Actor in a Supporting Role

This is the third category of the 3rd Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors. Nominees are pictured in the order I’ve ranked them and drawn from a pool of approximately 92 films. Click here to see previous years of this category.

Honorable mentions (in alphabetical order):
Jemaine Clement (Gentlemen Broncos), Nathan Fillion (Trucker), Zach Galifianakis (The Hangover), Woody Harrelson (The Messenger), Ed Helms (The Hangover), Jude Law (Sherlock Holmes), James McAvoy (The Last Station), Alfred Molina (An Education), Alessandro Nivola (Coco Before Chanel), Zachary Quinto (Star Trek), Peter Sarsgaard (An Education), Paul Schneider (Bright Star), Liev Schreiber (Taking Woodstock), Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones)

Runners-up:
TIMOTHY HUTTON (Serious Moonlight)
STEPHEN LANG (Avatar)
KODI SMIT-MCPHEE (The Road)
CHRISTIAN MCKAY (Me and Orson Welles)
CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER (The Last Station)

The winner:
Christoph Waltz (Inglorious Basterds) was terrifying, hilarious, wacky, and intimidating all at the same time as a Nazi officer known as the Jew Hunter. He owned every scene in which he appeared, and earns bonus points for his excellent command of not one but four languages – German, French, English, and Italian.

Other nominees:
Nicholas Hoult (A Single Man) worked with the artistic direction of Tom Ford and understood the subtlety and complexity of the film he made, and conveyed so much maturity even with just his eyes. Matt Damon (Invictus) enhanced what could have been a throwaway part with a complete immersion in the role and impressive physical transformation that really made a difference. Jackie Earle Haley (Watchmen) was a ghastly narrator for the devastation of his world, and it’s hard to decide whether he’s more fearsome with or without his ink-blotted mask. Anthony Mackie (The Hurt Locker) didn’t try to make his performance theatrical, and therefore his rendition of a soldier at war was incredibly human.