J. K. SIMMONS
J. K. Simmons (born January 9, 1955) is an American actor and voice actor. In television, he is known for playing Dr. Emil Skoda on the NBC series Law & Order (and other Law & Order franchise series), neo-Nazi Vernon Schillinger on the HBO prison-drama Oz, and Assistant Police Chief Will Pope on TNT’s The Closer. His film roles include J. Jonah Jameson in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, and music instructor Terence Fletcher in 2014’s Whiplash. Simmons’ performance in Whiplash (2014) received widespread critical acclaim and earned him more than thirty accolades, including the Academy Award, the Golden Globe Award, and the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor. (More from Wikipedia)
In his acceptance speech for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, J. K. Simmons urged: “Call your mom, call your dad. If you’re lucky enough to have a parent or two alive on this planet, call ’em. Don’t text. Don’t email. Call them on the phone. Tell ’em you love ’em, and thank them, and listen to them for as long as they want to talk to you.”
(February 2015)
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The Oscar for Film Editing was awarded to Tom Cross for his work in Whiplash; J. K. Simmons won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in this film, where he played a sadistic instructor at a prestigious music conservatory. Cross has been nominated numerous times for many different awards for his film editing work, including a second nomination for an Oscar for La La Land (2016). Cross speaks of the technical aspects of his work on Whiplash (again as quoted on NBCNews.com): “‘The sync [to the music] was close but not perfect,’ Cross said. ‘We couldn’t alter the soundtrack and couldn’t slow or speed up the music; that would have been immediately obvious. I needed to line the pictures up, manually, for every drum hit. The most precise way was with jump cuts and to take out frames. And this had to be imperceptible.’”
(Year 9 Review)
