This year at the Oscar’s a little-known character actor, who had been creating strong performances in independent films and television for years, finally got some well-deserved recognition when he was nominated alongside some major stars in the Best Supporting Actor category. John Hawkes, nominated for the gritty Ozarks noir Winter’s Bone, was the category’s clear underdog, running against academy favorite Geoffrey Rush and a trio of famous leading men, Mark Ruffalo, Jeremy Renner, and Christian Bale. And while Hawkes (my personal pick for the award) did not win the Oscar, his deliciously menacing performance has earned accolades and taken Hawkes to a new level of fame. The kind of fame that has Variety reporting on his next move.
The perennial supporting player is set to star in an upcoming independent about heralded poet and journalist Mark O’Brien, a man whose brush with polio left him to spend much of his life in an iron lung, paralyzed from the neck down. While O’Brien’s story has the obvious structure for an inspiring tale of perseverance and resilience, writer/director Ben Lewin (Paperback Romance) will be focusing on a very specific journey within O’Brien’s life, one of sexual discovery. Obviously, being paralyzed from the neck down, O’Brien’s tale of sexual awakening is more complicated than most. When he wanted to explore his sexuality, the published poet hired a sex surrogate, hence the film’s title: The Surrogate.
It’s a topic fraught with touchy spots, but with Hawkes on board, I’m betting The Surrogate will be a challenging but affective drama. There’s no word yet on when the film would go into production, but fret not burgeoning Hawkes fans! Martha Marcy May Marlene and Higher Ground, two indies featuring the daring actor, are currently making the festival rounds, and Hawkes is also set to appear in Steven Soderbergh’s sci-fi thriller Contagion, which hits theaters this October.
If you’d like to learn more about the life of Mark O’Brien, you can watch the documentary about him and his work, Breathing Lessons, in full online:
What do you think of Hawke’s next move? Are you familiar with the life and works of Mark O’Brien?