You probably don’t recognize this man’s face, although his name might sound a touch familiar but Jackie Earle Haley, above everyone else who has been nominated this year deserves an Oscar. For those of you movie goers luck enough to see Little Children (which also garnered Kate Winslet a best actress Oscar nomination) you will know what I’m talking about. Haley plays the supporting character Ronnie J. McGorvey, a recently released sex offender who comes back home to live with his mother in a neighborhood full of children. His performance is astonishingly good.
You can see my earlier review for Little Children here.
Jackie Earle Haley’s history leading up to this role is pretty amazing. He started out as a child star, he was in TV commercials at 6 years old, was in the original Bad News Bears and played side by side with a young Dennis Quaid in Breaking Away. But then like a lot of child stars he lost work as he aged. People in the know in Texas knew where to find him, they would call for pizza, he delivered it for quite a while in that state. He also worked as a security officer, limo driver and a furniture refinisher. Life was starting to take on a different but nicer turn for him when he started to direct commercials and such for a local cable station when someone in Hollywood finally remembered his talent and gave him a call.
When Haley saw the script he knew he had to play the role and he also knew that he was going to have to do something huge to win the producers over. So, he made a 20 minute film focusing on the life of his character. The production value on it was so good that when this story was told at a local SAG screening Q&A the director joked that he was worried when he watched it that he might be out of a job. Luckily all Haley wanted was to act, so he was cast.
So, why is Haley most deserving? His background is hard and his performance is good but there have been wonderful performances this year by many actors and actresses. From Helen Mirren to Peter O’Toole to newcomer Jennifer Hudson, they are all fine and worthy, and most have had long hard roads and fabulous characters to work as in their pictures this year.
The difference is Haley was given the role of a sex offender, not a singer, or a Queen, he got one of the most feared and hated types of people there are today. And he created a character that has such soul that you start thinking about your own. The character journey this man goes through and the things that he does…he make us see that no matter who you are or what you have done you are still a human being. People make terrible mistakes and sometimes they have deep dark secret habits that they hate but haven’t found a way out of the cage, it’s frightening what this caged animal does to escape.
Jackie Earle Haley deserves the Best Supporting Oscar for this role in Little Children not because of what he went through to get the role but because his performance is truly the best of the year.
