In a big bump to her somewhat stagnant Oscar campaign, Felicity Jones has won the Gotham Award for Breakthrough Actor for her performance in Drake Doremus’ improvisational style love story “Like Crazy”, beating out Best Actress competitor Elizabeth Olsen of “Martha Marcy May Marlene” and Supporting Actress hopeful Shailene Woodley for “The Descendants”, as well as lower profile indie actors Harmony Santana for “Gun Hill Road” and Jacob Wysocki for “Terri.”
Will this translate to elevated Oscar chances for Jones? Well, history seems to indicate so. Five consecutive winnters out of the past seven – Catalina Sandino Moreno for “Maria Full of Grace” (2004), Amy Adams for “Junebug” (2005), Rinko Kikuchi for “Babel” (2006), Ellen Page for “Juno” (2007) and Melissa Leo for “Frozen River” (2008) – have gone on to score Oscar nominations. For the past two years, however, actors in much smaller films have won (Catalina Saavedra for “The Maid” and Ronald Bronstein for “Daddy Longlegs”, respectively) though Jones’ win over Santana and Wysocki could mean the winds are changing yet again. Nobody knows anything, isn’t that how the saying goes?
