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Comeback of the Year
by Richard Horgan |
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12/12/2006 at 9:39:09 PM |
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Normally, when a former child star returns to the spotlight after an absence of many years, it is because of a police citation, not a citation from film critics. But that’s the case with Jackie Earle Haley, named Best Supporting Actor of 2006 - by New York and now San Francisco groups - for his portrayal in Little Children of convicted sex offender Ronnie McGorvey.
After forgettable roles back in 1993 in a science fiction thriller (Nemesis), a TV movie about a polygamist (Prophet of Evil: the Ervil LeBaron Story) and a sorry sequel (Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence), the callbacks and paid gigs dried up. In short order, Haley was on the road to oblivion via work as a limo driver, security guard, furniture refinisher, pizza delivery boy and after hours driving range (illegal) golf ball retriever. The Northridge, CA native finally decamped to San Antonio, Texas, where he started a successful commercial production company, JEH Productions, and found a happy, new life (that’s him, below, at yesterday’s L.A. premiere of Dreamgirls).
Haley, who started acting at the age of five and is remembered for later roles in films like The Day of the Locust, The Bad News Bears and Breaking Away, has never previously won any acting award. In essence, he is the only good thing to come out of the fall flop All the King’s Men. It was writer-director Steve Zaillian - and separately star Sean Penn (who worked with Haley in the 1983 Broadway play Slab Boys) - who remembered Haley from the old days and cast him as Willie Stark’s bodyguard Sugar Boy, thereby greasing the Hollywood wheels once more. Zaillian actually tracked Haley down in France, where he was enjoying a belated honeymoon with second wife Amelia.
All those years of commercial production experience paid off when it came to Haley’s audition tape for Little Children. He made it himself, investing it with fancy tracking shots. When he finally read in New York with Kate Winslet, his co-star also in All the King’s Men, he moved her to tears, something she says has never happened before when participating in another actor’s screen test audition. When Field offered Haley the Ronnie role then and there, the room was soon filled with the sounds of two actors sobbing.
And perhaps most comically, as first reported in USA Today, when writer-director Todd Field talked to a New Line Cinema executive about who he wanted to cast as Ronnie, the exec recalled that his nephew, on the night of his prom, had been chauffeured around in a limo by the very same person!
Haley is a shoo-in for a Golden Globe nomination this Thursday and an odds-on favorite to get an Oscar nomination as well. In a year when soon-to-be former child star Haley Joel Osment pleaded no contest to driving under the influence and possession of marijuana, perhaps The Sixth Sense star can take solace in the notion that at age 45, the other Haley has somehow pulled off the incredible feat of falling back into the most challenging (and award-winning) role of his career.
Update - 12/14/06: Even though Little Children landed Golden Globe nominations for Best Picture - Drama, Best Actress - Drama (Kate Winslet) and Best Screenplay, Haley was bumped out of the Best Supporting Actor category by the likes of Ben Affleck, Mark Wahlberg and Brad Pitt (the HFPA still loves its movie stars). Nonetheless, Haley remains on track for an Oscar nomination.
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