It has been almost 20 years since a man of Asian descent was nominated for best actor by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
But this year, for the first time in the 93-year history of the Oscars, there are two: Steven Yeun (“Minari”), who was born in South Korea and raised in the United States, and Riz Ahmed (“Som do Metal”), who is a Briton of Pakistani descent. Both Ahmed and Yeun are nominated for the first time.
Their inclusion is especially noteworthy because, despite a flurry of Asian-led films in recent years, including last year’s best film winner, “Parasite,” the academy has failed to recognize the artists.
Only two actors of Asian descent have been nominated in the category: Russian Yul Brynner (“The King and Me”) and Ben Kingsley (“Gandhi”, “House of Sand and Fog”), whose father is Indian. Brynner and Kingsley won the award once each.
Yeun and Ahmed have a tough competition: the other three nominees this year are Chadwick Boseman (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”), who won a posthumous Golden Globe for best drama actor, Anthony Hopkins (“The Father”) and Gary Oldman (“Mank”).
New York Times film co-critic AO Scott called Yeun’s performance in “Minari”, as a Korean immigrant father who changes his family to the Ozarks, “effortlessly magnetic”. Scott praised his tendency to find “the cracks in the character’s carefully cultivated reserve, the great and unstable emotions behind the facade of stoicism”.
Ahmed was acclaimed for his performance as a drummer who loses his hearing in “Sound of Metal”, praised by the Times critic, Jeannette Catsoulis, for his “extraordinarily intricate” sound design. She highlighted Ahmed for his “urgency of adjustments which is poignantly credible – he is a study in trouble”.
Although only four men of Asian descent have been nominated for best actor, the situation is much more bleak in the category of best actress, where only one woman of Asian descent has been nominated (Merle Oberon for the 1935 drama “The Dark Angel”), And none won.