Who was the first actor to win an Oscar for playing a real person?
One of the biggest challenges of acting is surely the pressure of playing a real-life person, someone who audiences are already familiar with and can therefore compare to your performance. You don’t want to offend fans, nor veer into the territory of caricature – it’s a tough one to nail.
Many actors have succeeded in bringing real people to life, like Sam Riley as Ian Curtis in Control or Paul Dano as Brian Wilson in Love and Mercy. It’s not always about looking identical to an artist – see Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan – but rather embodying their essence through mannerisms and movement.
Biopics are an interesting genre, because when a celebrity’s life has been highly publicised anyway, what’s the point of creating a fictionalised version? For this reason, they should, in theory, fall as lowly in the cinematic pecking order as the ill-fated Amy Winehouse biopic, Back to Black, lambasted for once again attempting to profit off her misery. Let her rest in peace was the general consensus held by fans.
Still, biopics are a guaranteed box office hit (most of the time), because the bigger the fanbase, the bigger the audience. Look at the success of Bohemian Rhapsody. If you’re centring a huge, beloved star like Freddie Mercury in your narrative, you’re almost definitely going to rake in a decent amount of ticket sales, even if the movie looks like it was edited by a toddler. How it won Oscars is beyond me.
The biopic genre has pretty much existed since the beginning of cinema, with Georges Méliès’ Jeanne d’Arc standing as the first, dating back to 1900. Since then, everyone from legendary actors to war criminals have been portrayed in stories about their lives, and in recent years, the genre has become particularly ripe for Oscar bait. If a notable star portrays another notable figure in a decently budgeted film, there’s almost a guarantee that they’ll wind up with an Oscar nomination. That’s just the way Hollywood goes.
The first actor to win an Oscar for playing a real person
As the curtain opened on the first ceremony in 1929, little did anyone know that playing real people would be the easiest way to get your hands on an award, and it only took until the third event for it to happen. Before Gary Oldman stepped into the shoes of Winston Churchill for Darkest Hour and Meryl Streep took on milk-snatching Maggie Thatcher for The Iron Lady – both of which won Oscars – George Arliss took on the role of Tory leader Benjamin Disraeli in 1929 for the aptly-titled Disraeli.
Released when sound cinema was still in its infancy, Disraeli saw Arliss become the first British star to win ‘Best Actor’, although this wasn’t the first time he’d played the prime minister. For some reason, Arliss had quite the attachment to portraying Disraeli, having starred as the politician in a 1911 play of the same name. In 1921, he appeared in a film adaptation of the play before taking on the role yet again for a sound version eight years later.
Arliss actually competed against himself in the category following a nomination for his role in The Green Goddess, while Wallace Beery, Maurice Chevalier, Ronald Colman, and Lawrence Tibbett were all recognised for performances, too. Yet, it was Arliss who made history with his biopic win.
It’s hard to pinpoint why Arliss couldn’t stop coming back to playing Disraeli, but clearly it worked, because it inevitably won him a prestigious Academy Award. I guess he really resonated with the Tory politician (somehow), causing him to remain attached to the role despite the passing of almost two decades.
