The Oscar Winners: Javier Barden, Best Supporting Actor: "No Country for Old Men"

Javier Bardem, one of Spain's premier actors and the recipient of a Best Actor Academy Award nomination in 2001 for Before Night Falls, won the 2007 Best Supporting Actor Oscar for No Country for Old Men. Some viewers of the movie might wonder why the actor with the largest role in terms of screen-time in the movie would be nominated in the supporting category rather than as a lead. Being put up for Best Supporting Actor is just a trick that producers have used since at least the time of All About Eve (1950), when Anne Baxter refused 20th Century-Fox's attempt to put her in the Supporting Actress category to improve both her and Bette Davis' chances of bringing home the gold. The winner of a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for The Razor's Edge in 1947, Anne Baxter got her Best Actress nod, and drew enough votes away from Davis to deny the great movie diva her third Oscar. Thus, Bette in one of the all-time great screen performances was trumped by Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday, whose performance seen now, almost 60 years later, can almost NOT be believed as Holliday is an eccentric personality, to say the least. (All About Eve was nominated for a record 14 Oscars, since equaled by James Cameron's box office blockbuster Titanic, and won six, including a Best Supporting Actor nod for George Sanders.)