2009 – Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)
Inglourious Basterds tells an alternate history story of two plots to assassinate Nazi Germany’s leadership, one planned by Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), a young French Jewish cinema proprietor and the other by a team of Jewish American soldiers led by First Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt). Christoph Waltz co-stars as Hans Landa, an SS colonel tracking down Raine’s group and who is connected to Shosanna’s past.
2010 – Christian Bale (The Fighter)
The Fighter centers on the lives of professional boxer Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) and his older half-brother Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale). Adams plays Micky’s girlfriend Charlene Fleming, and Leo portrays Micky and Dicky’s mother, Alice Eklund-Ward. The film was inspired by the 1996 documentary that features the Eklund-Ward family, titled High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell.
2011 – Christopher Plummer (Beginners)
Beginners tells the story of Oliver, a man reflecting on the life and death of his father, Hal, while trying to forge a new romantic relationship with a woman, Anna, dealing with father issues of her own. The film is based on the true-life coming out of Mills’ father at the age of 75, five years before his death. Christopher Plummer plays Hal Fields, Oliver’s father.
2012 – Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained)
Django Unchained is a film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, starring Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, and Samuel L. Jackson. Set in the Old West and Antebellum South, it is a highly stylized tribute to Spaghetti Westerns using an obvious revisionist history, in particular the 1966 Italian film Django by Sergio Corbucci, whose star Franco Nero has a cameo appearance. Christoph Waltz plays Dr. King Schultz, a German dentist-turned-bounty hunter.
2013 – Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club)
Dallas Buyers Club is a 2013 American biographical film, directed by Jean-Marc Vallee. The film tells the story of Ron Woodroof, an AIDS patient diagnosed in the mid 1980s when HIV/AIDS treatments were under-researched, while the disease was not understood and highly stigmatized. Two fictional supporting characters, Dr. Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner), and Rayon (Jared Leto), were composite roles created from the writers’ interviews with transgender AIDS patients, activists, and doctors.
2014 – J. K. Simmons (Whiplash)
Whiplash is a drama film written and directed by Damien Chazelle. It depicts the relationship between an ambitious jazz drumming student (Miles Teller) and an abusive instructor (J. K. Simmons). Paul Reiser and Melissa Benoist co-star.
2015 – Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies)
Bridge of Spies, set during the Cold War, the film tells the story of lawyer James B. Donovan, who is entrusted with negotiating the release of Francis Gary Powers—a U.S. Air Force pilot whose U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960—in exchange for Rudolf Abel, a convicted Soviet KGB spy held under the custody of the United States, whom he represented at trial. The name of the film refers to the Glienicke Bridge, which connects Potsdam with Berlin, where the prisoner exchange took place.
