BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — From its humble roots in Greenwood, “The Help” has now reached the pinnacle of Hollywood honors.
The hit movie is nominated for four Academy Awards, including best picture, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences announced today.
Viola Davis is up for best actress, and Octavia Spencer and Jessica Chastain are nominated for best support actress.
Davis, who played elderly Aibileen, and Spencer, who played sassy Minny, both portrayed maids who speak out about their white employers in 1960s Jackson. Chastain plays Celia Foote, a poor girl who marries a rich man and has trouble fitting into high society.
All three actresses were also nominated for Golden Globes, with Spencer winning for best supporting actress.
The movie is based on Jackson native Kathryn Stockett’s best-selling novel. Most of it was filmed in the Greenwood area in 2010.
“To have a very low-budget movie that turned out so well, I’m just excited for all the nominees and for everyone that was involved with the movie. It’s had a huge impact on Greenwood and Mississippi,” said Bill Crump, a Viking Range Corp. executive and economic development official who was crucial in recruiting “The Help.”
The competition it faces is led by Martin Scorsese’s Paris adventure “Hugo.” It has the most nominations at 11, among them best picture and best director.
Because of a rule change requiring films to receive a certain number of first-place votes, the best-picture field has only nine nominees rather than the 10 that were in the running the last two years.
The other nominees for best picture are:
• The silent film “The Artist”
• The family drama “The Descendants”
• The Sept. 11 tale “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close””
• The romantic fantasy “Midnight in Paris”
• The sports tale “Moneyball”
• The family chronicle “The Tree of Life”
• And the World War I epic “War Horse.”
The nominations set up a best-picture showdown between the top films at the Golden Globes: best musical or comedy recipient “The Artist” and best drama winner “The Descendants.”
“The Artist” ran second with 10 nominations, among them writing and directing nominations for French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius, a best-actor honor for Jean Dujardin and a supporting-actress slot for Berenice Bejo.
Dujardin, who won the Globe for best actor in a musical or comedy as a silent-era star whose career goes kaput with the arrival of talking pictures, will be up against Globe dramatic actor winner George Clooney for “The Descendants,” in which the Oscar-winning superstar plays a dad trying to hold his Hawaiian family together after a boating accident puts his wife in a coma.
Other best actress nominees, besides Davis, are:
• Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady”
• Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe in “My Week with Marilyn
• Glenn Close as a 19th century Irishwoman masquerading as a male butler in “Albert Nobbs”
• And Rooney Mara as a traumatized, vengeful computer genius in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”
Also up for supporting actress are Melissa McCarthy as crude but caring member of the wedding in “Bridesmaids” and Janet McTeer as a woman posing as a male laborer in “Albert Nobbs.”
McCarthy is a rare funny lady competing at the Oscars, which don’t frequently honor performances in mainstream comedies such as “Bridesmaids.”
The nomination for McCarthy was a small surprise next to some other startling turns among the nominations.
Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock’s “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” which got mixed reviews and has not been much of a factor at earlier Hollywood awards, was a very unexpected best-picture nominee. Von Sydow’s supporting-actor nomination also was a surprise.
Oscar heavyweight Clint Eastwood’s “J. Edgar” was shut out entirely, including for best actor, where Leonardo DiCaprio had been a strong prospect as FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover.
