2018 Oscars: Can Downsizing’s Hong Chau become the 6th Asian Actress to get a Supporting Actress nom?

Erik Anderson September 3, 2017

Hong Chau plays Ngoc Lan Tran in Downsizing from Paramount Pictures

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Alexander Payne’s Downsizing opened the Venice Film Festival and while the film itself is a polarizing, uneven story, it boasts a powerful, touching and funny performance by Hong Chau who plays an immigrant and activist who protests the Vietnamese government’s acts against her small village and ends up shrunken and placed in a TV set at a Target store in Omaha, Nebraska. Though not being featured in the first half of the film, Chau brings so much energy, charm and strong moments that elevate the film’s muddled second half.

Can she really buck the trend and become the first Asian actress to get a Supporting Actress nom in the last few years?

Technically, Hailee Steinfeld, whose grandmother is Filipino did get a nom in 2010 for her work in True Grit so Chau wouldn’t be looking at breaking a 10-year streak but could be the first Asian actress to earn a nom in the last 7 years. The last Asian actress to earn a nom before that was Rinko Kikuchi for her silent but powerful turn as Chieko Wataya in Babel (2006). In fact, if we look at the entire history of the Academy Awards, only 5 Asian actresses earned nods in the Supporting category – with Miyoshi Umeki being the first back in 1957 for her role in Sayonara, in a performance that won her the Oscar.

Chau has two strong “Oscar clips” in Downsizing. In the first, she tells Christoph Waltz and Matt Damon about her experience losing her leg and dreaming to meet the Norwegian scientist who was behind the concept of human shrinking. In the second, towards the end of the film, she confronts Matt Damon to clarify a key plot point that’s integral to her character. In both scenes, she does something special – she manages to move from a comic playful tone to a more serious, somber and very touching one in the same scene. Her character itself manages satire and sincerity and is able to be both hilarious and affecting.

In terms of Oscar chances, Chau is the film’s strongest chance at an acting nomination – and given the Academy’s recent push to diversify its membership base, Chau could see a boost. But regardless of her origin, she is deserving of a nod thanks to her impeccable turn as Ms. Tran, or as she’s more frequently called in the movie Ngoc Lan.

She’s definitely one to watch during the 2018 Oscar race. See where Hong Chau ranks in Supporting Actress from The Gold Rush Gang right here.

[author title=”Mina Takla” image=”http://i63.tinypic.com/33f730i.jpg”]Mina Takla is a foreign correspondent for AwardsWatch and the co-founder of The Syndicate, an online news agency that offers original content services to several film brands including Empire Magazine’s Middle East edition and the Dubai Film Festival. Takla has attended, covered and written from over 10 film festivals online including the Dubai International Film Festival, Abu Dhabi Film Festival, Cannes, Venice and Annecy Film Festivals. He been following the Oscar race since 2000 with accurate, office-pool winning predictions year after year. He writes monthly in Empire Arabia, the Arabic version of the world’s top cinema magazine and conducts press junkets with Hollywood stars in the UK and the US. He holds a Master’s degree in Strategic Marketing from Australia’s Wollongong University and is currently based in Dubai, UAE. [/author]

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.