In this Vanity Fair piece, I tackle the issue of Oscar-worthy CG performances….
When John Hurt played the title character in David Lynch’s The Elephant Man in 1980, it took a gifted makeup artist seven hours each day to sculpt Hurt’s bulbous forehead and twisted mouth. The actor was utterly unrecognizable under the heavy, Quasimodo-like prosthetics, but he managed to communicate sadness, grace and humanity in the role, and garner an Oscar nomination for his performance.
Thirty years later, computer-generated special effects are replacing the dying art of prosthetics, but an actor has yet to earn a nod from the Academy for a purely virtual performance. One who could break the digital barrier this year is Zoe Saldana, for her work as Avatar’s alien heroine, Neytiri. To win a nomination for best actress, Saldana would have to overcome Hollywood’s skepticism about the motion-capture process director James Cameron used to make Avatar, a technique that relies on animators to enhance an actor’s work.