- A potential double nominee for the 2009 Oscars, Kate Winslet ended up getting shortlisted – as Best Actress – for one movie, The Reader. Yet for that performance Winslet had been pushed in the supporting category. What happened? Oscar rules offer the likely explanation.
Academy’s voting rules likely explain Kate Winslet’s and Penélope Cruz’s 2009 Oscar wins
Here’s a bit of Academy Award voting trivia: In all but one category, Oscar voters are supposed to write down the name of the film – not the talent – on the ballot.
So, if your Best Director choices for the 2010 Oscars are Pedro Almodóvar for Broken Embraces, Kiyoshi Kurosawa for Tokyo Sonata, and Michael Haneke for The White Ribbon, you need to write down on your ballot Broken Embraces, Tokyo Sonata, and The White Ribbon.
The information above – minus the specific examples – is found in Steve Pond’s TheWrap column, which adds that the exception to this rule is the acting category (or rather, group of categories), in which Actors Branch voters must enter the name of the performers and their corresponding films.
So, if you’re voting for Penélope Cruz in Broken Embraces, you need to spell out Cruz’s name and the name of her film.
Get those actors’ names & movie titles right
This rule exists so absent-minded and/or lazy Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voters will refrain from jotting down, for instance, “Meryl Streep.” For if they were to do so this year, the PricewaterhouseCoopers ballot-talliers wouldn’t know whether they were selecting Streep for Julie & Julia or It’s Complicated.
And if voters are dim-witted enough to just write down Julie & Julia as their Best Actress selection, ballot-talliers will wonder whether they meant Meryl Streep or Amy Adams.
In either case – whether you write in only the actor’s name or only the film’s title – your vote will be disqualified. The same will happen if you vote for, say, Helen Mirren in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (did you mean Josh Duhamel?) or Sandra Bullock in Avatar (did you mean Sigourney Weaver?).
Admittedly, it’s unclear what they will do if you vote for Tilda Swinton in Julie & Julia or for Meryl Streep/Amy Adams in Julia. See, it’s complicated.
In the grey zone
In Pond’s TheWrap piece, he also quotes a letter Actors Branch Governors Annette Bening, Tom Hanks, and Henry Winkler sent to voters:
“If you think that a performance occupies a middle ground between leading and supporting, you may list it on your ballot in both categories.” [italics in the text]
But what if a performance receives enough votes for a nomination in both categories?
According to the Governors’ letter, the nominated performance will be included “in the category in which it received the most support.”
Pond then adds the following parenthetical observation:
“(Technically, [PricewaterhouseCoopers] tallies votes in the leading and supporting categories simultaneously, and the moment an actor receives a nomination in one category, he or she is eliminated from consideration in the other [for the same role].)”
The above paragraph raises a few questions, as one would have expected PwC vote-talliers to go over every Actors Branch ballot before making a decision as to the category in which to place potential double nominees.
That’s not how it works? And what if there’s a voting tally tie for the same performance in both the lead and supporting categories? Will a coin flip decide the acting category for the nomination?
Kate Winslet in & out
Anyhow, the Governors’ letter probably explains Kate Winslet’s Best Actress Oscar nomination for Stephen Daldry’s Holocaust-themed drama The Reader earlier this year, even though U.S. distributor The Weinstein Company had been pushing her in the Best Supporting Actress category so she wouldn’t compete against herself for her work in Sam Mendes’ marital drama Revolutionary Road.
Although one could theoretically say that The Reader’s de facto lead character is Michael Berg (played by David Kross), the Weinstein Company’s awards season/Oscar campaign strategy was clearly the result of another Academy rule that bars actors from receiving more than one nomination in the same category.
In all probability, Winslet was shortlisted as Best Actress for The Reader after garnering more votes as a lead than as a supporting actress for that one performance. Once in, she most likely was found to be competing against herself for her Screen Actors Guild Award-nominated portrayal of Leonardo DiCaprio’s disaffected wife in Revolutionary Road.
So what happens then?
Well, with Winslet receiving more votes for The Reader than for Revolutionary Road, the latter performance would be disqualified in accordance with the Academy’s Only One Performer per Acting Category rule.
We can then state with a strong degree of confidence that that’s how earlier this year Best Supporting Actress SAG Award winner Kate Winslet became a Best Actress Oscar winner for The Reader. And, with Winslet out of the way, that’s how Penélope Cruz became a Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner for Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
And, with Kate Winslet very much in the way, that’s how Best Actress SAG Award winner Meryl Streep (Doubt) suffered her eleventh consecutive Oscar loss.
“Oscar Voting Rules Likely Explain Kate Winslet Win” notes
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences website.
Kate Winslet The Reader image: Melinda Sue Gordon | The Weinstein Company.
“Oscar Voting Rules Likely Explain Kate Winslet Win” last modified in July 2025.