Who is the Steven Spielberg actor who waited 42 years to be nominated for an Oscar again?

In The Fabelmansthe film with many autobiographical overtones of Steven Spielberg which has just been released in Argentina, and has 7 Oscar nominations, there is an actor, with a recognized face, but whom the Hollywood Academy has not been able to recognize until now.

It is Judd Hirsch, who after 42 years was nominated for an Oscar again, again as a supporting actor. The first time was at the 1981 ceremony, for people as onethe film with which Robert Redford debuted as a director, and in which he composed Dr. Berger, the psychiatrist the protagonist attended, Conrad (Timothy Hutton), who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, anguished by the death of his brother , for which he was responsible.

people as one He won 4 Oscars, for Best Picture, Direction, Adapted Screenplay for Alvin Sargent, and Supporting Actor for Hutton. Mary Tyler Moore, who was her mother, was nominated for Lead Actress and lost. Donald Sutherland, who was the father, was not even nominated.

But the truth is that Paramount Pictures, the film’s production company, did a little cheating, something that the Academy allows: it nominated Hutton, instead of Best Leading Actor -which he is- as Supporting Actor. And the members who voted on the nominations selected him and Hirsch.

And Hutton won.

In The Fabelmans Judd Hirsch is not the young protagonist’s psychiatrist, but Uncle Boris. He mentors the still-aspiring filmmaker, Sammy. Spielberg gave Hirsch, who has a brief performance, one of the best lines in his script. As Uncle Boris says, “art will give you crowns in heaven and laurels on earth. But it will tear your heart out.”

From physicist to actor

Hirsch, a New Yorker, lived his childhood and youth between the Bronx and Brooklyn. He graduated from the City College of New York, a public university, in… physics.

With his degree in hand, he enlisted in the United States Army, and when he returned to civilian life, he was hired as an engineer by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Well, he realized that it was not his thing, and he studied acting at the HB Studio, located in Greenwich Village.

He started his career in the theater, and always returns to the stage: he won two Tony Awards for his performances in Conversations with My Father Y I’m Not Rappaportby Herb Gardner, and in the ’70s he appeared frequently in TV movies.

But it was Cab (1978-1983), the sitcom with Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd (the future Doc of Back to the Future) which made it popular. It was Alex, a rather bitter taxi driver, who was brooding over his divorce and the loss of custody of his only child. And he twice won the Emmy, for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series, in 1981 (when he was nominated for an Oscar) and 1983.

Although he shone again in running on empty (1988, by Sidney Lumet, in Argentina on the edge of the void), in which he and his wife are wanted by the FBI for participating in the bombing of a napalm laboratory during the ’70s, and in which River Phoenix, Joaquin’s brother who played their eldest son, was a candidate to the Oscar, it was not until Independence Day (1996) where we saw him again in the cinema.

It was Julius Levinson, the elderly father of engineer David Levinson (played by Jeff Goldblum). With its $817 million worldwide gross, it became the highest-grossing film of Hirsch’s career. He returned to the same role in the sequel. Independence Day: Counterattack (2016), a mess, a tome, a waste of time.

Before, he was a professor at Princeton University on the Oscar-winning A brilliant mindby Ron Howard (2001), and in 2005 he was the father, retired, of the two brothers who in the series numbers (2005-2010) collaborate in the investigation of FBI cases.

and the fans of The Big Bang Theory they will remember. Hirsch acted in two episodes, in 2016. He played the anthropologist Alfred Hofstadter, father of the main character, Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki) who was talked about a lot in the series, but never appeared. Until he did.

For The Fabelmans Spielberg (76), Hirsch (87) and john williams (90), the musician who is the living person with the most nominations in history, with 53, can leave the Dolby Theater victorious on Sunday, March 12, the same day that Argentina, 1985 competes in best international film. Hirsch won’t have it easy: Brendan Gleeson, Brian Tyree Henry, Ke Huy Quan and Barry Keoghan are terrific in her line.

Hirsch will not be able to wait another 42 years to be nominated.

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