AFT Awards: Best Actor in a Supporting Role

This is the third category of the 5th 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 138 Films. Click here to see previous years of this category.

Honorable mentions (in alphabetical order):
John C. Reilly (Carnage), Christoph Waltz (Carnage), Ryan Gosling (Crazy Stupid Love), Don Cheadle (The Guard), Liam Cunningham (The Guard), Mark Strong (The Guard), Henrik Rafaelsen (Happy Happy), Joachim Rafaelsen (Happy Happy), Kevin Spacey (Horrible Bosses), William Johnk Nielsen (In a Better World), Markus Rygaard (In a Better World), Paul Giamatti (The Ides of March), Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Ides of March), Kevin Spacey (Margin Call), Rainn Wilson (Peep World), Shahab Hosseini (A Separation), Benedict Cumberbatch (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), Colin Firth (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), Mark Strong (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), Ezra Miller (We Need to Talk About Kevin), Patton Oswalt (Young Adult)

Runners-up:
John C. Reilly (Cedar Rapids)
Jeremy Irons (Margin Call)
Kiefer Sutherland (Melancholia)
Stellan Skarsgard (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)
Jonah Hill (Moneyball)

The winner:
Christopher Plummer (Beginners) was delightfully spry and charming as a 75-year-old man who realized that he was gay and started trying to live his life in new and exciting ways.

Other nominees:
John Hurt (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) was prickly, paranoid, and entirely superb as head honcho Control. Kenneth Branagh (My Week with Marilyn) imbued his Laurence Olivier with bravado, prestige, and a magnificent impatience for his blonde costar. Max Von Sydow (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) conveyed considerable emotion in his mute performance as a mysterious and kindly stranger. Viggo Mortensen (A Dangerous Method) was calm, deliberate, and formidable as Sigmund Freud.