Olivia Colman and Anthony Hopkins to have Oscars together in Florian Zeller’s The Father
Aux Features Film
It has to be nice to have an Oscar, right? Not only is it the highest form of recognition in American cinematic acting—barring the fabled SuperOscar, still merely hypothetical at this time—but it also opens up all sorts of conversational topics with your fellow Oscar winners. Where do you put your Oscar? Isn’t your Oscar heavy? Do you think we should take them out of their boxes, and maybe make our Oscars kiss?
All of which, we can only assume, will be happening between takes on Florian Zeller’s new film The Father, which has just cast 1992 Best Actor (The Silence Of The Lambs) and 2019 Best Actress (The Favourite) Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman as its Academy-blessed leads. Adapted from Zeller’s play of the same name, the film will see Colman play Hopkins’ daughter, attempting to help her highly independent father even as age begins to take its toll on his ability to care for himself. It sounds like exactly the sort of dramatic circumstances that might call for a little bit of trophy-adjacent thespianism, and damn if Zeller hasn’t found two perfectly qualified people for the job. The original play won the writer-director the Moliere Award for best play back in France, before going on to score a Tony for Best Actor on Broadway—not Oscars, necessarily, but still, pretty dang good!