As the death march through movie-awards season begins in earnest this month, with the Toronto Film Festival now underway, it will be hard to miss Steve Carell — once a staple of comedy and now the star of two heavy, high-profile and potentially prize-worthy films — over the coming months.
First up: “Beautiful Boy,” a true story starring Carell and Timothee Chalamet (“Call Me by Your Name”) as a father and son struggling with the younger man’s methamphetamine addiction. One of Toronto’s most anticipated offerings — based only on an April CinemaCon sneak peek of an emotional scene between Carell and Chalamet — the film left critics buzzing about the Oscar prospects of its two stars (along with director Felix Van Groeningen and screenwriter Luke Davies). The film is scheduled for an Oct. 12 commercial release.
Then, in December, Carell anchors “Welcome to Marwen,” in which he does double duty. Using a mix of live-action and motion-capture performance, director Robert Zemeckis’ fact-based film features the actor as both traumatized beating victim Mark Hogancamp — the subject of the 2010 documentary “Marwencol” — and Hogancamp’s alter ego, a G.I. doll. The doll appears in animated World War II fantasy sequences set in a miniature Belgian village that Hogancamp built as a form of art therapy. A third movie — as yet without a firm release date — features Carell in a supporting role as Donald Rumsfeld. That still-untitled biopic, based on the career of former Vice President Dick Cheney (Christian Bale), reunites the two actors with their director from “The Big Short,” Adam McKay.
With Carell’s startling metamorphosis in 2014’s “Foxcatcher,” the funnyman began a journey away from a reputation carefully honed on “The Daily Show” and in such hit movies as “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” The Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday called his creepy, Oscar-nominated performance, as convicted murderer John DuPont, a “breakthrough.”