Why F1 the Movie should win the best picture Oscar

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It may not be in pole position, but Brad Pitt and director Joseph Kosinski’s sleek, technically inventive ode to motor racing definitely qualifies for the Academy podium Could, should, would F1 the Movie win the best picture Oscar? Well, we have to be realistic here: F1 is currently a massive outsider, at 200-1 along with The Secret Agent , which has no chance either but for very different reasons. It’s not hard to see why: this is a swaggeringly mainstream film, where tech and branding dwarf the human input, with the film itself acting as a front-end battering ram for a sports organisation desperate to break into the promised land of the US auto racing circuit. (I mean it’s right there in the title.) So even the most reactionary, conservative Academy voter is going to find it hard to mark F1 with their tick. So no, I don’t think it could win. That’s not to say F1 doesn’t have quite a bit going for it. The Oscars, as we know, have historically had a problem with so-called “popular” ...
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Marianne Jean-Baptiste: ‘I’d work for Mike Leigh again in a heartbeat – in fact, I’ll pay him!’

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The actor moved to LA 22 years ago. Now she’s back in the UK to star alongside Bryan Cranston in All My Sons. She talks about the frightening rehearsal schedule, how she’d work again with Mike Leigh in a heartbeat, and why she’s taking up boot-making

Marianne Jean-Baptiste arrives at the rehearsal space in  Southwark, south London, and immediately announces that she’s exhausted. It wouldn’t be surprising if nerves were getting the better of her; she’s seven days into a three-week rehearsal period for a new production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, which is brutally short by anyone’s standards. Peeling off unnecessary layers of clothes – it’s not a cold morning – she says jet lag has been messing with her circadian rhythms since she flew in from Los Angeles 10 days ago. “I woke up at 3.17am and was like: fucking hell, it’s early. I lay there for a while, running lines from the play in my head. Then I thought: ‘Just get up and marinate the chicken.’ I made some ginger and lemon tea and finally went back to bed at 5.30am – better to rest and meditate even if I couldn’t sleep.” She was just dropping off when the alarm went off at 7am.

These days it takes a lot to lure Jean-Baptiste away from her home in Los Angeles, where she has lived with her husband and two daughters full-time since 2003. She loves coming back to her native London to see family and friends, but LA has a slower pace, optimism, a vast ocean – and, for a long time, it offered better opportunities to work. Her breakthrough role as the optometrist in search of her birth mother in the 1996 Mike Leigh film Secrets & Lies brought a Golden Globe nomination and she became the first Black British woman to be nominated for an Academy Award. She memorably played Doreen Lawrence in the 1999 TV movie The Murder of Stephen Lawrence, but then – nothing much. Most offers of work came from the US.

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