Oscar nominations: No new faces in the supporting actor category

By Chris Lee

Jan. 10, 2013 12 AM PT

For all five of this year’s supporting actor Oscar entries, nomination day must have felt like déjà vu all over again. All the nominees – Christoph Waltz, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Alan Arkin and Tommy Lee Jones – have previously won Academy Awards and are intimately familiar with the early morning wake-up call that accompanies that honor.

Jones, who was nominated for Oscars twice before -- and won for supporting actor in 1994 for his turn as U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard in “The Fugitive” -- landed the nomination this year for his role as the firebrand congressman Thaddeus Stevens in “Lincoln,” a part that showcases him spewing invective and sporting 2012’s worst movie toupee.

Arkin was lavished with academy love as far back as 1967 when he received a best actor in a leading role nod for his turn in “The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming.” He landed another lead actor nod two years later for “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” and won a supporting actor Oscar in 2007 for his turn in “Little Miss Sunshine. ” and is honored this year for his portrayal of a tough-talking Hollywood movie producer in “Argo.”

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“It may be something I’ve experienced before,” Arkin said Thursday morning of the nomination process, “but it’s delightful to have your peers recognize that you’re still alive and doing creative work.”

Hoffman has twice before scored supporting actor Oscar nominations: for his performances in “Charlie Wilson’s War” in 2007 and “Doubt” the following year, and was awarded a statuette for his lead role in the biopic “Capote” in 2005. On Thursday, academy balloters singled out his performance as a charismatic cult leader loosely based on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master.”

Of all nominees, Waltz has been down the Academy Award path the fewest times, winning for supporting actor on his maiden Oscar voyage in 2009 for his portrayal of Nazi lieutenant Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds.” The Austrian actor was honored for his work with Tarantino again this year, portraying a dentist-turned-bounty hunter in the slave revenge epic “Django Unchained.”

And of all the nominees, De Niro is the most well acquainted with the Oscar ritual, having been nominated four times prior to Thursday morning and winning twice: for his supporting role in “The Godfather: Part II” in 1974 and again in 1980 for his lead portrayal of boxer Jake LaMotta in the biopic “Raging Bull.” In the 2012 dramedy “Silver Linings Playbook,” De Niro plays an obsessive-compulsive suburban dad fixated on his beloved Philadelphia Eagles -- the father of Bradley Cooper’s rage-prone bipolar character looking to get his life together.

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chris.lee@latimes.com