First-Time Nominee Spotlight: Kodi Smit-McPhee
With the recent announcement of this year’s nominees for the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards came a number of names who are receiving the accolade for the first time, including Kodi Smit-McPhee for his supporting work in Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog. Since both nominees and winners are chosen by their fellow SAG-AFTRA members, garnering a nod comes with the weight of being recognized by one’s peers. We’re here to take a look at Smit-McPhee’s acting journey that led up to him receiving the honor.
The Australian actor was first encouraged by his wrestler-turned-thespian father to try his hand at the art form. According to an interview with the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, he started out as a child actor at the age of 8, and by 10, he was already holding his own next to the likes of Eric Bana in Richard Roxburgh’s biodrama Romulus, My Father. Smit-McPhee was just two years older when he played opposite Viggo Mortensen in John Hillcoat’s onscreen adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel, The Road. The young actor kept building up a list of impressive film credits, starring with Chloë Grace Moretz in Matt Reeves’ 2010 vampire horror film Let Me In at the age of 13.
Then at 16, Smit-McPhee received a diagnosis that led to a journey of self-discovery. The teenager learned he had ankylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory disease that can lead to fused vertebrae and cause chronic pain. Smit-McPhee told The New York Times that he at first felt a lot of grief over not being as physically capable as others his age. But the pain and felt emotions eventually led him to seek answers and grow in self-understanding. “I found myself in libraries a lot; I would find heaps of books on things that transmuted apathy into a sense of control or freedom,” Smit-McPhee recalled. “But my knowledge didn’t help me become someone who wasn’t an outcast — it just made me grateful for being an outcast because of where it took me intellectually, spiritually, and physically.”
The actor often plays outsider types, such as the mutant Nightcrawler in X-Men: Apocalypse and X-Men: Dark Phoenix. The same is true of his character in The Power of the Dog. Smit-McPhee plays a shy teen named Peter in the film Campion both directed and adapted from Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel of the same name. Set in 1920s Montana, Peter’s lisp and pastime of crafting paper flowers are ridiculed by the cowboys amongst which he finds himself.
Peter doesn’t change who he is in order to fit in with the toxic masculinity that surrounds him, though. Smit-McPhee told Gold Derby that it felt great to play such an empowered character and shared about his own journey to self-acceptance. “I spent a lot of my life worrying about the way that people viewed me, or the way that I sounded, or the way that I looked, or the things that I was interested in,” he noted. “And it was only when I fully embraced who I was as an artist, as a person, and loved myself that certain things started to manifest for me.”
Benedict Cumberbatch and Kirsten Dunst also received SAG Awards nominations for their work in the film, but it’s not their first time on the nominees list as with the 25-year-old actor. Come February 27 when the awards show take place, we’ll find out if Smit-McPhee has another career milestone first and winds up with a win for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role. But in the meantime, we certainly think he’s earned a place in the spotlight.
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