Could Jennifer Aniston Win an Oscar?

If there is one nomination slot that has me beyond intrigued for the upcoming awards season, it is the final slot in the Best Actress category for the Oscars.  We recently discussed my predictions in the category, but I think it's worth doing a bit of a deeper dive here, because there's so much that comes with this slot in terms of momentum.

This is because the four women that are currently predicted for a nomination have such huge debits when it comes to actually winning the trophy.  Reese Witherspoon has already won, and more importantly, has spent most of her time between nominations in celebrity wilderness, making flops and getting arrested.  Julianne Moore is who most people consider the frontrunner for the trophy, and that may well be, but Julianne Moore is in her 50's, and in the entire history of the Best Actress category, only one woman has won the Oscar while in her fifties (Shirley Booth, 1952's Best Actress), and her film isn't particularly large.  Rosamund Pike has a particularly large film in Gone Girl, but her character is deeply divisive and that could put a damper on her chances of actually winning.  And while on paper Felicity Jones seems about perfect for the trophy (traditional age to win, first-timer, British, beautiful-sorry, Oscar has a type, there's no denying it), her role borders on the supporting and this may just be a default nomination because Eddie Redmayne is going to win.  As a result of these four women not having emerged as a victor quite yet, the fifth nomination could be the key to actually winning the trophy, and as a result, I want to propose something: could Jennifer Aniston be this year's Best Actress?

Here me out here, as I'm sure many of you just rolled your eyes and said something snarky about any number of recently panned Aniston pics.  Yes, Aniston has not had a lot of critical success in the years since Friends went off the air.  Rachel Green is just a distant memory when you have The Bounty Hunter and The Switch blocking your view, but let's not forget that Aniston is one of the biggest box office draws in Hollywood.  Her films regularly pack in the theaters in a way that, say, Katherine Heigl, another constant subject of ire, never has been able to sustain.  She's also a wildly popular celebrity, regularly featured in the tabloids, and while cinephiles scoff at this fact, an enormous amount of the populace love her.  Whether it be residual Friends love, those who will always be Team Aniston, or those who find her chill California girl persona refreshing, Aniston has been able to capitalize on public goodwill in a major way that reminds me in a lot of ways of another recent Oscar-winner, Sandra Bullock.

Like Aniston, Bullock wandered through the wilderness a bit leading up to her Oscar.  Her popularity remained roughly in tact-people continued to like her as a celebrity, even if they didn't care for the movies that she produced.  Much like people want Aniston to still be Rachel Green, they wanted Bullock to be the charming girl we fell in love with in While You Were Sleeping and Miss Congeniality.  The thing was that Bullock's early Oscar buzz seemed more like a way to flatter a sliding star who seemed to have a populist hit on her hands than to actually stoke the flame with Oscar, but the idea caught on pretty quickly.  2009 was very similar to 2014 in that there didn't seem to be a robust lineup to fill the Best Actress race, and no one had quite emerged as a winner.  Meryl was up, but Meryl is always a contender and she can only fill one slot.  Gabourey Sidibe and Carey Mulligan seemed like surefire nominees, but both seemed so young and new to actually win the trophy.  And the rest?  Just look at the Globes lineup to see how lacking we were for actual competition that year.  AMPAS could have done an easy cop-out and just picked two British actresses (Helen Mirren and Emily Blunt) for bland costume dramas, but they didn't, and wanted to go with the major movie star who would have everyone in America clamoring for her to win an Oscar.  And then she did.

There are some parallels between the two campaigns that don't quite match up.  Most importantly, The Blind Side was a MASSIVE hit, kind of unparalleled in terms of box office, and there's no way on earth that Aniston's dark drama Cake will be able to compete with such a film.  Secondly, The Blind Side was released in November, while Cake was released in January, so there was more time for the general populace to discuss how Bullock was "due" and how much they loved her.  And of course, Bullock was willing to play the game, and I remain skeptical of whether Aniston is skilled enough in front of a podium to do this (though, to be fair, I was a little bit skeptical that Bullock would be able to do that as well).  The Best Actress winner is almost always someone who can find the right balance between self-deprecating, relatable, humbled, and still a little bit saucy in their speeches and TV appearances leading up to the ceremony.  Bullock did that with her "did I win this, or did I just wear you down?" style tactic, but Aniston has yet to show that sort of balance on the awards campaign trail (lest we forget, she was married to Brad Pitt the last time she won a major award).  However, if she can cultivate that persona, there's a lot of room this year.

That's because most of Aniston's competition could easily be vanquished if she actually is able to build on this momentum.  Emily Blunt is going to be upstaged by Meryl Streep in Into the Woods.  Shailene Woodley is incredibly young and in a teen movie.  Amy Adams is in a film that has no buzz, and is really only in contention because Amy Adams always is nominated for Oscars (if she ever started winning, she'd deserve comparisons to Meryl in this regard).  And Hilary Swank, probably Aniston's most formidable foe, is a two-time winner (not due) whose second trophy has a bit of a blemish on it in Oscar's memory (not everyone thinks it was a wise move in hindsight, which hurts dramatically-just ask Gwyneth Paltrow).  If Cake actually delivers the goods, this could happen.  I do wish from a pragmatic standpoint that they were releasing the film earlier, as the December qualifier has vanquished more potential contenders than it's actually helped (that this is a good idea is based on some random reality not based in fact), but Aniston is a big enough star that she alone can keep the film in contention.  In a few weeks we'll see if I'm all-knowing or whether I look like a fool, but I think that pundits underestimate Aniston's chances at their own peril.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Do you think Jennifer Aniston could be this year's stealth Best Actress winner, or at least one of the five nominees?  If not, who are your predictions, and what woman is going home with Oscar in February?  Discuss in the comments!