Academy Awards 2021: Films with local ties vie for Oscar gold

In the Academy of Arts and Sciences 93-year history, only two winners have been South Shore natives, and both hail from Quincy. Ruth Gordon won an Oscar as supporting actress in 1968 for "Rosemary's Baby." Peter Del Vecho, producer of the Disney animated princess tale "Frozen," took home the region's second statuette in 2014.

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Chris Cooper, a Kingston resident by way of Kansas City, Mo., won an Academy Award in 2003 as best supporting actor for his work in “Adaptation.” 

Wareham’s Geena Davis won her supporting actress Oscar in 1989 for “The Accidental Tourist.”

No homegrown talent received nominations this year, but there are still some local connections to the annual Academy Awards, which will be handed out at 8 p.m. April 25 on ABC. The ceremony has been delayed two months due to the pandemic.

Norwell’s Jennifer Coolidge can be seen in the Oscar hopeful, “Promising Young Woman,” the dark comedy thriller with a #MeToo theme starring Carey Mulligan as a woman bent on revenge.  The movie is up for five Oscars, including best picture, film editing, actress for Mulligan and director and original screenplay for Emerald Fennell.

Coolidge co-stars with Clancy Brown as the parents of Mulligan's character, a damaged 30-something forced into a dark place. 

“This film does an incredible job capturing the aftermath of a family broken up by a tragedy, a family that has suffered,” says Coolidge in the film's press notes. “They’re trying to cope the best they can — their daughter is alive but not really. They’re two middle-class people with no experience on how to handle something where someone is an empty shell. They’re a family that’s going through the motions.”

The top-notch cast also includes Hamilton native Bo Burnham, Alison Brie, Connie Britton, Laverne Cox, Adam Brody, Sam Richardson, Molly Shannon and Christopher Mintz-Plasse. "Promising Young Woman," which is Fennell's directing debut, won the BAFTA award for outstanding British film. Fennell, best known for playing Camilla Parker Bowles on "The Crown," also won original screenplay accolades from the Writers Guild. The movie is available to rent via video-on-demand platforms.

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The shot-in-Massachusetts "Sound of Metal" scored six Academy Award nominations, including best picture and best actor for Riz Ahmed, who plays a punk-rock drummer losing his hearing. Scenes were filmed in nine Massachusetts cities and towns including Boston, Cambridge, Danvers, Framingham, Ipswich, Lawrence, Malden, Rowley and Topsfield.

Weymouth’s Jodi Purdy worked on the team at Boston Casting to cast the background parts. She wrangled 100 headbangers to fill the Middle East nightclub in Cambridge for the opening scene. More importantly, she helped cast deaf extras for scenes with Ahmed.  She said she is especially proud that eight of her background actors were bumped up to principal roles, five were deaf adults.

“It was such a wonderful thing for me as a human to be part of,” Purdy-Quinlan told the Ledger in March.

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Another Massachusetts tie to the Oscars: Best supporting actor nominee Sacha Baron Cohen plays activist and Worcester native Abbie Hoffman in “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” which can be streamed on Netflix. Boston native Jeremy Strong (HBO's "Succession") stars opposite Cohen as Jerry Rubin, who alongside Hoffman co-founded the Youth International Party.

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Reach Dana Barbuto at dbarbuto@patriotledger.com.