Joaquin Phoenix (‘Joker: Folie à Deux’) is the 11th Best Actor Oscar winner to reprise role on film
After coming up short on his first two Best Actor Oscar bids for “Walk the Line” and “The Master,” Joaquin Phoenix took the gold in 2020 for “Joker.” The film reaped a whopping 11 Oscar nominations and cracked the billion dollar mark at the box office. The sequel, “Joker: Folie à Deux,” which hits theaters October 4, makes Phoenix the 11th Best Actor victor to reprise his winning role in a feature film.
Only one of the first 10 fellows to pull off this double feature earned another Oscar nomination: Bing Crosby (he won for “Going My Way” in 1945 and was nominated for “The Bells of St. Mary’s” in 1946).
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Those who preceded Crosby in reprising their winning roles without academy recognition are Warner Baxter (“In Old Arizona,” 1930), who went on to appear in both “The Cisco Kid” (1931) and “Return of the Cisco Kid” (1939), and Spencer Tracy (“Boys Town,” 1939), who starred in “Men of Boys Town” (1941).
Edward Flanagan portrayer Tracy is the first of four men who earned his spot on this list by playing a fact-based role. He was succeeded in that regard by Charles Laughton (“The Private Life of Henry VIII,” 1934), James Cagney (“Yankee Doodle Dandy,” 1943), and Jose Ferrer (“Cyrano de Bergerac,” 1951), who expanded on their respective portrayals of King Henry VIII, George M. Cohan, and Cyrano de Bergerac in “Young Bess” (1953), “The Seven Little Foys” (1955), and “Cyrano and d’Artagnan” (1964).
In 1975, this group grew by two with the additions of Gene Hackman (“The French Connection,” 1972; “French Connection II”) and John Wayne (“True Grit,” 1970; “Rooster Cogburn”). They were then followed a quarter century later by Anthony Hopkins, who reprised his winning “The Silence of the Lambs” (1992) role in both its sequel, “Hannibal” (2001), and prequel, “Red Dragon” (2002). Then came Michael Douglas (“Wall Street,” 1988; “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” 2010), whose break between performances lasted longer than that of anyone else on this list.
A handful of Best Actor winners revived their characters outside of feature films. Aside from Ferrer, who also played de Bergerac in three TV specials between 1955 and 1974, this group consists of George Arliss (“Disraeli,” 1930; short film “Impressions of Disraeli,” 1931), Yul Brynner (“The King and I,” 1957; TV series “Anna and the King,” 1972), George C. Scott (“Patton,” 1971; TV movie “The Last Days of Patton,” 1986), and Charlton Heston (“Ben-Hur,” 1960; direct-to-video animated film “Ben-Hur,” 2003).
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