Oscar® Sundays

Julia Roberts won the Best Actress Oscar for her commanding performance as the real-life legal assistant taking on a power company that poisoned a small California town. The film received nominations for Best Picture (Danny DeVito, Michael Shamberg, and Stacey Sher, producers), Steven Soderbergh’s direction (he won that same year for Traffic, in competition with himself), Susannah Grant’s original screenplay, and the supporting performance of Albert Finney as attorney Ed Masry, part of the expert cast chosen by Soderbergh and casting director Margery Simkin. Additional inspired casting decisions came via Marg Helgenberger as an ailing plaintiff and Aaron Eckhart as Roberts’s biker love interest.

A woman is united with the adult daughter she never knew in this original and authentic comedy-drama from seven-time Oscar nominated writer-director Mike Leigh. Leigh created the script by his usual method, working with his top team of actors (assembled by casting directors Paddy Stern and Susie Parriss) to develop the characters and storyline, and the result earned nominations for stars Brenda Blethyn and Marianne Jean-Baptiste as the unlikely mother-daughter pair.

The cast includes Leigh regulars such as Timothy Spall and Lesley Manville, and the film was also nominated for Best Picture (Simon Channing-Williams, producer), Leigh’s direction, and the film’s original screenplay.

Robert Redford made his feature directorial debut with this moving adaptation of Judith Guest’s novel about the difficult relationship between an emotionally troubled teenager and his parents after the death of his brother. The cast, selected by Redford and casting director Penny Perry, balanced veteran actors such as Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore (earning a Best Actress nomination for a rare dramatic role), and Supporting Actor nominee Judd Hirsch with relative newcomers such as Elizabeth McGovern, Dinah Manoff, and Timothy Hutton, who won Best Supporting Actor for his sensitive performance as the guilt-ridden Conrad. The film earned additional Oscars for Best Picture (Ronald L. Schwary, producer), Redford’s direction, and Alvin Sargent’s screenplay.

Veteran TV writer-producer James L. Brooks made his feature directing debut with this hilarious yet heartbreaking adaptation of the novel by Larry McMurtry (The Last Picture Show, 1971), following the complicated relationship between a strong-willed mother (Shirley MacLaine, winning her only Oscar) and her daughter (fellow Best Actress nominee Debra Winger). Jack Nicholson won his second Oscar for his supporting role as a free-spirited astronaut who romances MacLaine, with John Lithgow also nominated as Winger’s well-meaning suitor. Another member of the top-notch cast, chosen by Brooks and legendary casting directors Ellen Chenoweth and Juliet Taylor, was Jeff Daniels, in his breakout role as Winger’s feckless husband.

The film also earned three Oscars for Brooks himself—for Best Picture, Directing, and his adapted screenplay.

Dustin Hoffman plays a principled but difficult actor who unexpectedly achieves stardom after assuming a female persona to land a role on a soap opera. Director Sydney Pollack and casting director Lynn Stalmaster supported Hoffman with a top-notch cast in this hugely popular farce, including Supporting Actress winner Jessica Lange as a soap actress, Supporting Actress nominee Teri Garr as Hoffman’s perplexed girlfriend, Charles Durning, Dabney Coleman, Geena Davis, and a scene-stealing performance by Pollack himself as Hoffman’s long-suffering agent.

The film was also nominated for Best Picture, Hoffman’s performance, and Pollack’s direction as well as its original screenplay, cinematography, film editing, sound, and the original song “It Might Be You.”

Paul Thomas Anderson won Oscars for Directing, Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture (along with fellow producers Adam Somner and Sara Murphy) for his epic comedy-thriller, loosely based on Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, about a retired revolutionary (Best Actor nominee Leonardo DiCaprio) trying to protect his teenage daughter from a fanatical military officer (Supporting Actor winner Sean Penn). Anderson’s longtime casting director Cassandra Kulukundis won the Academy’s inaugural Oscar for Casting, her expertly chosen ensemble including past Oscar winners (including Supporting Actor nominee Benicio Del Toro), veteran character actors, comedy writers, and impressive newcomers such as Chase Infiniti, who plays DiCaprio’s daughter.