Kieran Culkin won the Academy Award for best supporting actor for his role as the descendant of a Holocaust survivor who makes a family pilgrimage to Poland in the dramatic comedy of manners “A Real Pain.”
This was the first Oscar nomination for Culkin, 42, who was a favorite to take home the honor. His performance as Benji Kaplan, a disinhibited and emotionally unstable charmer who embarks on the trip with his anxious cousin (Jesse Eisenberg), earned Culkin a shelf’s worth of statues this awards season, including from the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
Culkin’s nomination is one of two for “A Real Pain,” which is also competing for best original screenplay. Eisenberg wrote the script and directed the film.
The other candidates in the best supporting actor category were Yura Borisov, for the modern rags-to-riches fable “Anora”; Edward Norton, who plays Pete Seeger in the Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown”; Guy Pearce, for his role as an architect’s predatory patron in “The Brutalist”; and Culkin’s “Succession” co-star Jeremy Strong, who portrayed Donald J. Trump’s mentor Roy Cohn in “The Apprentice.”
In a charming, casual speech that was largely pointed toward his wife, Jazz Charton, Culkin told a short story about asking her for a fourth child if he won an Oscar. It was a memory they had not discussed in years, and he chose this moment to remind her. “Let’s get cracking on those kids,” he quipped.
Culkin also thanked his manager, his team and his co-star Eisenberg.
“Thank you for this, baby,” he said. “You’re a genius. I’d never say that to your face. Thank you for this movie.”
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
