BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – At age 25 and with only one movie to her credit, Jennifer Hudson is just a single step away from what many would see as the culmination of an American dream story.
Young, gifted Chicago church singer turned “American Idol” loser, she could cap a meteoric comeback at tonight’s 79th annual Academy Awards. She’s the overwhelming favorite to win a best supporting actress Oscar for the rousing musical “Dreamgirls.” She also could be on the brink of Oscar history.
If, as expected, she wins along with Forest Whitaker (“The Last King of Scotland”) for best actor and Eddie Murphy (“Dreamgirls”) for best supporting actor, it would mark the first time in the 79 years of the Academy Awards that three African-American performers won acting Oscars in a single night.
“Oh, my God, that would be history, and I would get to be a part of that history if it happens,” Hudson says in an interview squeezed into a schedule of seemingly endless Oscar preparations.
“Just being in that mix, being one of those African-Americans where it could happen – that just gave me chills right now thinking about it.” A frenetic pace Despite such exhilarating moments, Hudson is tired after weeks of constant media attention and events in her honor (“Dreamgirls” co-star and Oscar winner Jamie Foxx threw her a party Wednesday night).
“It’s crazy right now,” she says. But she says she’s looking forward to tonight’s show and, especially, her turn on the red carpet – even if she loses. “How can you not enjoy it and have fun with it?” she says. “I just want to live in it and absorb it no matter what it brings. I want to be in that moment.” At least a dozen performers in the four acting categories have won an Oscar for their first film roles, including Julie Andrews (“Mary Poppins”), Barbra Streisand (“Funny Girl”), Tatum O’Neal (“Paper Moon”) and the late Haing S. Ngor (“The Killing Fields”). But Hudson would be the first African-American to join that select group.
For several decades, blacks found the path to an Oscar victory a daunting task. Hattie McDaniel (“Gone With The Wind”) won best supporting actress at the 1940 ceremony, but then it was 24 years before the next African-American winner – Sidney Poitier (“Lilies of the Field”) for best actor.
The next biggest milestone came in 2002, when Denzel Washington (“Training Day”) and Halle Berry (“Monster’s Ball”) won the two top acting trophies. This year’s acting nominees include four African-Americans, and they are part of a black performer support group that’s been in place for years.
Hudson gets frequent phone calls, notes and advice, especially from Foxx but also from Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett, Queen Latifah, Whitney Houston and Alicia Keys.
“That’s the most shocking thing and surprising thing out of everything – the support from everybody,” Hudson says. “It’s amazing. They want to make sure I’m OK.” ‘Idol’ was a lesson On this day, Hudson appears mostly comfortable and relaxed, a far cry from her appearance last month on the “Today” show after Oscar nominations were announced. Then she seemed tongue-tied and overwhelmed.
Hudson is certainly dressed comfortably during the pre-Oscar show chat at her posh hotel. She’s wearing a pink T-shirt emblazoned with a line drawing of Martha Stewart (it reads “Martha is my homeboy”), black tights and gold slippers.
But even dressed down, she bears the trappings of fame. She’s wearing celebrity graft – diamond stud earrings from celeb-conscious jeweler Neil Lane and a gold Omega watch sporting more diamonds.
“I got the diamond studs yesterday and this watch last Friday,” she says. “Would you turn them down?” Her challenge, of course, is to remain herself amid the rush of fame, fortune, gifts and, perhaps, an Oscar. Last year’s surprise winner for best picture, producer-director Paul Haggis of “Crash,” who also won for best original screenplay, knows the price of victory.
“Your head can just swell and not stop swelling for a long time,” Haggis says. “You can believe what everyone has written about you and how brilliant you are.
“As a writer, if you are writing during this whole period you know you don’t have much talent,” Haggis says. “The page reminds you every single day. It doesn’t matter how good you were last week, this week is impossible.” Hudson says she has gained self-awareness. “I’ve discovered a whole new side of me through this experience,” she says. Looking back at ‘Idol,’ she says, where she finished a distant seventh, she’s learned a lot.
“You have so many people telling you what you need to do, what you need to sing, what you need to say,” she says. “What about what you yourself want to do? I’m going to listen to myself.
“I thank God I’ve gotten this second chance, and I know what not to take for granted, and I know what not to do. ‘Idol’ was a lesson. It helped prepare me for now.” Hudson says she has her own method of putting things in perspective.
“It’s all bizarre and amazing, and I don’t plan on it changing me,” she says. “I’ve experienced in this one year what many people have to go through in 10 years, and I feel now I’m the same.
And the Oscars are near. I feel like if something starts to change you, it has too much power, and you have to release it.” Post-Oscar plans Win or lose tonight, Hudson has at least the immediate future mapped out. Following the Oscars, she’ll be working on an album with music impresario Clive Davis.
On March 11, she will sing at a music fund-raiser at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, a city that solidly embraced “Dreamgirls.” When the film debuted late last year, three of the top 10 box-office theaters were in metro Atlanta.
And Hudson says she plans to do more films, but pledges she will not appear in movies simultaneously with recording. For now, though, there are the Oscars, where even an odds-on favorite can be a little star struck.
Bob Longino writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. E-mail: blongino AT ajc.com ENDIT Story Filed By Cox Newspapers For Use By Clients of the New York Times News Service
