Jeremy Renner Finally Gets The Mainstream Attention He Deserves With An Oscar Nomination

It’s been a long time coming, but as a huge fan of Jeremy Renner’s, I can tell you that it’s been a very frustrating wait.

Jeremy Renner was nominated in the category of Best Actor this morning, for the 82nd Annual Academy Awards, because of his stunning portrayal of Staff Sgt William James in Kathryn Bigelow’s (also nom’d this morning and will be the first female to win a Best Director Oscar) gut-wrenchingly good “The Hurt Locker”. This man is a truly undiscovered gem in Hollywood, the paradigm of underappreciated talent in Hollywood, a Hollywood oversaturated with bubble gum actors and actresses who get mainstream attention for talent, when compared to this man, is like stacking up a Tootsie Roll against Creme Brulee.

I remember going to see 28 Weeks Later in the theater. I remember watching this character, Doyle, and wondering “Who is that guy in real life? Not only is he extremely attractive, but damn, he’s really good!”. Then I happened to catch wind of earlier works of his, such as Dahmer, 12 and Holding (my personal all time favorite movie), and waited six hundred years to finally catch an early morning viewing of Neo Ned on Starz. Then I drove a decent distance to catch The Assasination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, just to see him in it.

And each time I’d see him in a movie, it would take my breath away how talented he is and I’d wonder, “Why hasn’t Hollywood embraced this man yet? Do they not see what an asset they have in him?”. But it seems now like finally Hollywood has caught on. And watching his immediate reaction on The Today Show (and thank you to our own Mystycl for alerting me that he was on!) just shows you how genuine he is as well. This was no fake reaction. It took nearly 15 years in the industry, but finally Hollywood sees what it has. He may not win (although I hope he pulls a Sean Penn and swoops in to take it, remember how Rourke got the Globe and SAG but lost the Oscar to Penn?) but I sure hope he does! And hear me now Academy members, even if you do decide to give the award to a just as deserving Jeff Bridges, if you don’t give the film itself and it’s director those Oscars as someone on Twitter said, I will have to hurt Cameron. In 3-D.

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