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She's acting in good faith

With her Academy Awards nomination for best supporting actress, Abigail Breslin, the joyful 10-year-old actor at the heart of Little Miss Sunshine, entered a rich niche of trivia: Oscar-nominated child actors.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published February 5, 2007

NEW YORK

With her Academy Awards nomination for best supporting actress, Abigail Breslin, the joyful 10-year-old actor at the heart of Little Miss Sunshine, entered a rich niche of trivia: Oscar-nominated child actors.

Who among us doesn't enjoy rattling them off: the Tatum O'Neals, the Haley Joel Osments, the Shirley Temples? Child actors are sometimes given scant respect - rewarded with tiny statuettes and parodied for their early, outsized fame. But the academy is often quite indiscriminate when it comes to age.

From 10-year-old O'Neal (1973's Paper Moon) to 80-year-old Jessica Tandy (1989's Driving Miss Daisy), the academy has rewarded a wide swath of age groups. It has shown a particular fondness for the young, though, and for a time made special arrangements for them.

In the 1930s and '40s, many child actors (including Temple, Mickey Rooney and Margaret O'Brien) were given smaller-sized honorary Oscars, dubbed "Juvenile Awards." Otherwise, children and adults have been nominated side by side in competitive categories.

A time for shrieking

In Little Miss Sunshine - which garnered four Oscar nominations, including best picture - Breslin plays Olive, the sunny, diminutive diva with her heart set on competing in a beauty pageant. Her dysfunctional family must take a road trip to make it there.

Breslin said when the nominations were announced, her mother woke her to tell her the news.

"I was like 'Oh, my God!' and I screamed kind of a little bit like how I did in the movie," Breslin said, referring to a scene from the film where she shrieks at the top of her lungs. "I was just so excited."

The young actor said she is a fan of Margaret O'Brien, who was just 8 when given her honorary Oscar in 1945, for her performance in Meet Me in St. Louis.

Breslin is the fourth-youngest actor to be nominated in a competitive category, edged out by a mere matter of months. O'Neal, Mary Badham of 1962's To Kill a Mockingbird and Quinn Cummings of 1977's The Goodbye Girl were all 10 when nominated.

She will undoubtedly be an underdog in the Oscar race, in which she is joined by Golden Globe winner Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls), Cate Blanchett (Notes on a Scandal), Rinko Kikuchi and Adriana Barraza (both from Babel).

Success with maturity

Only three actors younger than 17 have won an Academy Award. The good news for Breslin, though, is that all of the wins have come in the supporting actress category: O'Neal, 11-year-old Anna Paquin for The Piano in 1994, and 16-year-old Patty Duke for The Miracle Worker in 1963.

Other young girls to be nominated include Jodie Foster, who was 14 when nominated for her portrayal of a young prostitute in 1976's Taxi Driver, and Keisha Castle-Hughes, who was 13 when nominated for best actress in 2004 for Whale Rider.

The boys have been even younger.

The youngest actor ever nominated was 8-year-old Justin Henry, who was up for best supporting actor in 1980 for Kramer vs. Kramer.

Nine-year-old Jackie Cooper was nominated for best actor in 1931 for his leading performance in Skippy, adapted from a comic strip. In 2000, 11-year-old Haley Joel Osment was nominated for his performance in The Sixth Sense.

Child actors are often lampooned as never surpassing their early fame, but many of the previously nominated young actors continued to work successfully in Hollywood - most notably Foster (who won two Academy Awards as an adult), O'Neal, Rooney and Paquin.

One need look no farther than another nominee this year - former Bad News Bears star Jackie Earle Haley, who made a comeback in Little Children - to see that child actors can find success with maturity.

[Last modified February 5, 2007, 00:48:18]