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| Francis Ford Coppola winning the AFI statue from past winners George Lucas & Steven Spielberg |
Age: The average age of a winner is roughly 70, though that's definitely an average and we have seen a pretty wide range of ages winning this (i.e. don't count someone out like Francis Ford Coppola, the most recent winner, who took it at 86 in April). 19 of the winners have been in their 70's, which is by far the most common age group to have won in, and no victor has been older than 90 (top in age was Lillian Gish) or under 46 (Tom Hanks was the youngest, and that win was criticized enough that I doubt they go for someone that young again). As a result, bonus points to anyone somewhere between about 65 and 79, though obviously they could and have leaned outside that age range.
Occupation: The award is open to anyone in the film industry, but like most honors, it's more geared toward movie stars. 70% of the winners have been principally known for acting, and all but one of the remaining victors have been film directors (the sole person who was neither was John Williams, and there's really no living behind-the-scenes person who could rival Williams in terms of public perception, so it's going to be a movie star or a director). The film directors who did make it are extremely well-known, just as famous to the public in recent years as a movie star (think George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg), so don't count on aging directing superstars like Mike Leigh or Ridley Scott, as they likely aren't famous enough. They're also not American which brings us to...
Geography: This is the American Film Institute Award, and while that title doesn't preclude anyone, it sure helps if you're American. 92% of the winners were Americans upon the time they won (this includes people who enjoyed dual citizenship like Elizabeth Taylor, Nicole Kidman, and Sidney Poitier), which is potentially why foreign-born icons like Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, & Laurence Olivier never won, and likely why figures such as Anhtony HOpkins or Sophia Loren (who otherwise would have been shoo-ins) haven't taken the honor yet. The four foreign-born figures who did win (Sean Connery, David Lean, Julie Andrews, and Alfred Hitchcock) don't really have a lot in common, so it's hard to find some commonality to one person getting in if they aren't American other than a lot of fame.
Oscar History: If you're going to be taking the AFI title, it helps (a lot) if you're an Oscar winner. 78% of all of the honorees were at the time of their victory winners of at least one competitive Academy Award, and another ten were nominees (two of which, Henry Fonda & Martin Scorsese, would win competitive Oscars post their AFI ceremony). The only person to have never been nominated for an Oscar and still win the AFI is Steve Martin, someone you'd be hard-pressed to find an obvious corollary to today. This pattern has gotten even stronger in recent years-85% of the past twenty recipients were Oscar winners (excluding Martin, George Lucas, & Harrison Ford). So it's likely that the next person to take the AFI will have won a competitive Oscar.
DeMille/Kennedy: There are at least two other awards (other than Oscar) that are a strong indicator of whether or not someone will take the AFI trophy-the Cecil B. DeMille Award and the Kennedy Center Honor. 58% of all winners of the AFI were also DeMille winners and of those who were alive to receive it (the Kennedy Center Honors started last of the three honors, in 1978, so John Ford was dead by the time they rolled around despite having already won the AFI), 70% of the AFI Award victors also won the Kennedy Center Honor. 24 people have pulled off all three. While the AFI has occasionally led the field (ie someone won it there before they picked up other honors, like Steven Spielberg or Elizabeth Taylor), it's a pretty strong indication if you're primarily known for film and you win one of these trophies that you're going to win one (or both) of the others. One could make a sincere argument that the list of people who have taken the DeMille or Kennedy Center Honor without also having an AFI is particularly short right now, so AFI may be forced to add a new name to the roster next year. Of the 16 living DeMille and/or Kennedy Center victors (without an AFI) who have meaningful cinematic contributions, almost all of them have something stopping them from taking this leg of the Cinematic Life Achievement Triple Crown (I started calling it that years ago...and it has not caught on). There is one non-American (Sophia Loren) and one American more commonly known for citizenship in a different country (Anthony Hopkins). There are figures with major contributions to cinema but who are more known for TV (Dick van Dyke, Lily Tomlin, Rita Moreno, Billy Crystal) and music (Cher, Bette Midler), and then there are a few figures due to health or antipathy to such things might not show up at all (Joanne Woodward, Woody Allen). There's also the new stain on the Kennedy Center Honors due to the heavy involvement of President Trump that might make it hard for Sylvester Stallone to get this award given he won with that asterisk next to his name. That actually only leaves five figures who could be considered real contenders that AFI hasn't picked yet, four of which I'll list in my Top 10, and the fifth of which I'll cite in the Honorable Mentions.
Fame: This is a hard one to quantify, but all of the winners have to be famous, and tend to still be extremely well-known when they won. This has become even more pertinent in recent years. Arguably the last time someone who wouldn't have been a household name still the year they won was Robert Wise in 1998, and in the past few years we've seen actors who are very active in modern filmmaking like Diane Keaton, George Clooney, and Denzel Washington take the trophy, so I suspect that the winner next year would either be still revered or quite frankly be someone whom you'd expect to be getting top billing on your local marquee still. This means that names like Ellen Burstyn, Sissy Spacek, Julie Christie, Faye Dunaway, Mia Farrow, or Goldie Hawn, names that probably have earned this kind of distinction but aren't really household in the same way as Clooney, Streep, & Washington, are going to struggle to get a citation without some sort of revival. This ceremony is funded by advertising revenue, and as a result they need a bigger name for ratings.
With all of that said, here are my guesses as to who the Top 10 contenders for the trophy are. Sound off in the comments if you have predictions as well!
Honorable Mentions: Lots of options here, but seven names that come to mind are Anthony Hopkins, Robert Downey, Jr., James Cameron, Ron Howard, Eddie Murphy, Ralph Fiennes, & Jessica Lange. All of them have debits, ranging from a curmudgeonly persona off-screen that might preclude such an honor to not having a strong enough filmography to not being American, but these are names I wouldn't be shocked get into contention. I will note that in the past when I've done this prediction list I missed future winners because I didn't know they'd be having a moment (i.e. I had Coppola as someone whose time had likely passed until Metropolis came out and he seemed to make a point of wanting to get these honors on his resumé before he died or to remind people that movie won't be his epitaph), so some of these might be contenders, but I don't see them being immediate threats.
It feels weird not to list a single person primarily known as a director on this list, even though directors rarely win this award, and the concept of the celebrity-director is increasingly passé, but more than Cameron, Howard, or even Quentin Tarantino, it feels like Tim Burton is the kind of guy that gets in with AFI. Inevitably, he's going to get an Oscar moment at some point, and that will invite conversations about his singular filmography. In many ways Burton's personality feels at-home here. He's a California-born director, and similar to someone like Mel Brooks (a past winner) he has made or advanced the careers of a lot of stars (such as Johnny Depp & Winona Ryder) who haven't really had a moment with the AFI, and this would be a way of acknowledging that very successful segment in Hollywood. Call it a hunch that he could win this.
A more conventional choice would be Sally Field, a recent Kennedy Center Honoree, and an actress who has been doing a lot of the "I'm a legend" rounds in recent years (not just taking the Kennedy Center Honor, but also the National Medal of Arts and the SAG Life Achievement Award). Field is also well-regarded (it helps if you're popular), and has had a diverse career as a two-time Academy Award winner who has gone back-and-forth between populist hits and art-fare. Also, and most critically, she is one of the rare stars of the 1970's & 80's who still works regularly in major projects and is known to a new generation of moviegoers in a way that, say, Faye Dunaway would not be that hasn't won this yet. In some ways Jessica Lange makes more sense (she also has had television success in recent years), but for some reason she doesn't seem to be getting these types of awards (and with Trump in office, it's doubtful she'll get help from the Kennedy Center), so I will continue to bet on Field.
You could make a sincere argument that Davis shouldn't be on this list. In terms of leading work in films, she has the most recent and arguably most scant filmography of these artists. But there's a sense that Davis, one of the great talents of her generation, was cheated out of a longer career due to Hollywood's inability to give leading roles to Black women, and one wonders if that contributed in part to her recent Cecil B. DeMille Award (don't look at me like that-name another actor with as short of a filmography as Davis has had as a leading star that has won that award). Only three Black actors have ever won the AFI Life Achievement Award (Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, & Denzel Washington), and none of them have been a woman. I think Davis makes sense here, particularly with the recent passing of Cicely Tyson, and it's more a question of if, not when, she'll win. But she's rated lower as I think they make her wait just a few films more before they give her this statue (but it's coming).
Brad Pitt's wildly successful F1 (can you believe it made over $600 million?!?) earlier this year confirmed what we all know about him-he's one of the last movie stars of his era, someone who can still actually open a movie without creative IP attached (albeit he had the world's largest sport attached, but that's another story). Pitt's problem is going to be less about his filmography (given his stature in the industry and his long career, it's hard to begrudge him this statue) and more so that Pitt is a bit of an online pariah right now. That doesn't matter as much in Hollywood (see how he starred in a massive hit movie earlier this year), but advertisers don't want to touch him in an era of a boycott-heavy electorate, and the thorny allegations in his divorce with Angelina Jolie make me think that they might wait a few years to see if things cool down with him (this could also be the case with Johnny Depp & Ben Affleck, who I didn't list on this countdown, but obviously feel in the wheelhouse of someone who would win this).
Pitt's Ocean's Eleven costar Matt Damon feels far more likely to win. One wonders if they'd consider doing a pair between Damon and his childhood best friend Ben Affleck, but of the two I think that Damon, with his squeaky clean off-screen persona would be an easier sell. Damon is actually old enough to win one of these statues now (for those wondering if I'm crazy for putting him on here), just a few years north of potential future contenders like Reese Witherspoon and Leonardo DiCaprio, and I think is a serious threat to take this, though I partially believe that he'll get the DeMille first, mostly because they tend to like younger and they love getting movie stars to show up.
Robert Redford for many years was my go to answer for "who is the weirdest living person without an AFI Life Achievement Award." With his death, that title passes to Jeff Bridges. Bridges is such an odd exclusion from this list I constantly have to remind myself he's never won-he's a movie star from way back (and further back still if you remember he's a NepoBaby), an Oscar winner, and has a fame that means different things depending on how old you are, which is also the sign of someone with a robust filmography. Bridges is certainly the type of person who should have an AFI Life Achievement Award (it will be a miss, similar to Redford, if he never wins), and if I was asked to unilaterally give this out to someone next year, he'd be my choice. But his inability to win even when he could've gotten it 10-15 years ago makes me wonder if he's demurred, or isn't really on their radar.
Bizarrely, Samuel L. Jackson has never won any of the three major Triple Crown Awards, though he did recently get an Honorary Oscar. Jackson is a ubiquitous movie star, perhaps not to his credit (it's worth noting that Michael Caine never won any of these three prizes either, mostly because he had so much crap to go with the jewels in his filmography), but Jackson is such a big star it feels wrong that he doesn't win this award. In many ways, between his forays into countless major franchises (Star Wars, MCU, Jurassic Park, XXX) to his position as a muse for both Quentin Tarantino and Spike Lee he is the prototype for how to navigate the IP era, so you have to believe they know they should pick him, particularly given the embarrassingly low number of Black actors who have won this prize.
The Top 3 are not a question of if, but when, for the victory. All three are 1990's movie stars who have stayed relevant into the 2020's (sometimes for television, sometimes in the case of #3 for mining his filmography for legacy sequels), but they are all too famous to never win this award. Cruise is third both because he is about to win an Honorary Oscar (and in my opinion, likely to win a competitive one next year too, which makes the Honorary statue feel like a waste when it could've gone to, say, Catherine Deneuve who needs it more), but Cruise has graduated beyond the tabloid toxicity that once nearly wrecked his career (i.e. another reason they'll likely wait on Brad Pitt), and has become the savior of the movie theater industry. The ageless screen star probably doesn't like that he's now at the age where you win lifetime achievement awards, but it'd be nice if he won it while some of his earliest costars (like Dustin Hoffman & Jack Nicholson) are still around to give it to him.
Another ageless movie star that feels like she's too young to win this, but has entered that era is Julia Roberts (our Star of the Month last month!). There's more urgency around Roberts to win, in part because she's clearly the Queen of the 1990's movie stars (you could see a world where, say, Sandra Bullock or Demi Moore also win this statue at some point, but not before Julia), and also because she seems to be itching to do this again. In recent years she's been working more regularly, appearing in films that might gain a reputation (even if it's a bad one) like Luca Guadagnino's latest, and clearly wants to cement her place as one of the last great movie stars before IP took over Tinseltown. Roberts, in a similar fashion to Cruise, also wants to get this statue while all of the actors whom she starred opposite early in her career are still with us (as sad as it may seem Richard Gere is 76, Dustin Hoffman in 88, & it's unlikely most of her older costars in Steel Magnolias stay around much longer)...this would be the time to give it to her.
But I'm going to put someone who has the DeMille (unlike Julia & Tom) at #1. Jodie Foster doesn't have as plentiful of a filmography as Roberts & Cruise (and isn't famous in the same way anymore), but her two Oscars and recent successful run on True Detective add a timelessness to her star persona that you can't really rust. I also think it's noteworthy that she's a feminist icon, and a film director (and would be the first openly queer person to win the award). As I stated above, no woman has ever won this award primarily for being known for directing, but several have histories with directing, and Foster would add to that list. She's also 62, so just a few years shy of the prime age that wins this award, and giving it to her early is hardly a moment that will age poorly (no one really focuses on winning too early if it was someone who was always destined to win). If I had to bet on who wins next, I'd put my money on her.
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