The Best Actor category in the Reader Awards is a bit tricky for you all as we don't divide the category into the lead/supporting segments. Instead, you are encouraged to vote for whomever you like independent of how large a part they have in a given feature. Our selections in the lead/supporting categories were Christoph Waltz by a lot on the supporting side with George Clooney narrowly edging Jeremy Renner on the lead side. You aligned with our thought process in this regard.
For the second straight year, a villain in a high profile action film ran away with the competition. Christoph Waltz was far and away your choice for Best Actor. In the process, he almost matched the totals of the second and third place selections, George Clooney and Jeremy Renner, just as Heath Ledger had the previous year. You folks know what you like and you aren't shy about telling us what that is. In this case, it's a man who maintains a sense of decorum and the appropriate etiquette while informing a dairy farmer that he's harboring fugitives. Waltz is chilling in his adherence to professionalism throughout the film, even though it is theoretically a tale of Brad Pitt and his Basterds. Waltz actually received a factor of ten more support than Pitt, which means Waltz's agent should retroactively ask for more money for the performance.
With regards to the rest of the top ten, you generally felt the same way about Jeff Bridges, Sam Rockwell, Sharlto Copley, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Robert Downey Jr. that we did. The two performances we enjoyed more than you were the afore-mentioned Brad Pitt role in which he was outshined but still great as well as Matt Damon's work in The Informant!. You selected Colin Firth's Oscar-nominated role in A Single Man as well as a surprise candidate, Viggo Mortensen, for his work in The Road. That's a relatively unheralded performance and I tip my cap to those among you who went against trend thinking in naming him to your ballots. You folks frequently impress me with things like this.
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