Annette Bening deserves to finally win Oscar

Bening is not known solely or even primarily for her comic roles: there are few laughs in The Grifters, the 1990 neo-noir that led to the first of five Oscar nominations (American Beauty got her the second). Indeed, it might be said she’s not known primarily for any single thing – not even for her versatility, in the manner of Meryl Streep. Her range may mean audiences have never entirely got her into focus, which in turn could explain why none of those Oscar nominations to date have led to wins.

Outwardly, there’s little in common even between the characters Bening has played across the past decade – several of them real-life people, including the 1950s movie star Gloria Grahame in Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, the Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein in The Report, and most recently the endurance swimmer Diana Nyad, the role that’s made her an Oscar contender once again.

Bening’s way of transforming herself isn’t always as flashy as someone like Streep’s, but the voice, the mannerisms and the implied mental universe are different every time.

On another level the connection is simply the fact we can sense a mental universe to begin with. As incarnated by Bening, all these women are thinkers, with varied experiences behind them and complex, often neurotic inner lives – which is no less the case when she plays so-called ordinary people, like the single mother grappling with the social changes of the 1970s in Mike Mills’ semi-autobiographical 20th Century Women.

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Something else Bening’s characters tend to have in common is determination – a quality she clearly doesn’t lack in her own person, given maintaining a flourishing acting career into your 60s is still a tall order for women in Hollywood.

As for the Oscars, expecting anything like justice isn’t so much optimism as a category error. But it might not be too much to hope that, before she’s through, she can win at least as many of them as Kevin Spacey.

Nyad is on Netflix. The 96th Academy Awards take place on March 11.

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