What’s age (and weight) got to do with the Oscars?

Melissa Leo implored Academy voters to consider her as a nominee. But she may not have needed to ask.
Admit it, you would have dropped the f-bomb too.
After winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar at Sunday’s Academy Awards, Melissa Leo blurted out the expletive, along with a slew of more G-rated words of gratitude.
Yet no one can seem to let Leo off the hook for last month’s self-promotional “Consider” ads she personally paid for in Hollywood trade mags.
At the time, 50-year-old Leo blamed ageism for the need to toot her own horn.
“I did hear a lot of very positive comments, particularly from women of a certain age who happen to act for a living and happen to understand full well the great dilemma and mystery of getting a cover of a magazine,” she said.
So did Leo really need to hype herself up with a faux-fur-filled photo shoot? Jezebel’s Irin Carmon doesn’t think so. “Leo was already a frontrunner for her performance in The Fighter,” she wrote. ”And the ads just made people mock her.”
Regardless, Leo went home a winner, and seemed to prove to movie-goers (and maybe to herself), that age ain’t nothing but a number when it comes to talent.
Weight, on the other hand, still seems to be an equal-opportunity issue.
![508-83rd_Annual_Academy_Awards___Show__kmagandysunherald.com_45.standalone.prod_affiliate.81[1] Best Art Direction winner, Robert Stromberg, regretted not losing 20 pounds in time for Hollywood's biggest night.](http://about-face.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/508-83rd_Annual_Academy_Awards___Show__kmagandysunherald.com_45.standalone.prod_affiliate.811-194x300.jpg)
Best Art Direction winner, Robert Stromberg, regretted not losing 20 pounds in time for Hollywood's biggest night.
So the moral seems to be Hollywood’s elite can relax about wrinkles, but stay vigilant about their diets.
Er…you win some, you lose some?
– Michelle


