How much for your consideration? Best Actor

Continuing my series of poorly researched and misguided rants on the budgets of movies that win Oscars...

It is well known that famous actors will often lower their fees in order to star in a low budget, important, Oscar-worthy film. Why is this? Does this imply that big-budget movies are somehow not Oscar-worthy, or is this a fallacy, and budget is irrelevant to the chances of Oscar glory in the best actor category?

For the last 10 years, the winners of the best actor Oscar have been:

2005 - Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote ($7M)
2004 - Jamie Foxx, Ray ($40M)
2003 - Sean Penn, Mystic River ($30M)
2002 - Adrien Brody, The Pianist ($35M)
2001 - Denzel Washington, Training Day ($45M)
2000 - Russell Crowe, Gladiator ($103)
1999 - Kevin Spacey, American Beauty ($15M)
1998 - Roberto Benigni, Life is Beautiful (unknown, say $5M)
1997 - Jack Nicholson, As Good as it Gets ($50M)
1996 - Geoffrey Rush, Shine ($5.5M)

One movie on this list cracks the $100M barrier while three were made for less than $10M (I'm guessing about Life is Beautiful based on it being Italian, first time director, unknown actors etc. If anyone would like to correct me, please do so).

The average winning movie cost $35.6M. This is almost half the cost of the average Hollywood studio movie (about $65M). It just goes to show you can't buy a good performance. Not only that, but Ray, The Pianist, Life is Beautiful and Shine were not even produced by one of the big six studios. So maybe it's true, low budget is better for the best-actor category. There are a couple of reasons why this might be so. The obvious one is that big budget movies are mostly based around action and special effects, with acting and dialogue taking a back seat. The other is that the Academy recognises acting in important or controversial movie, and often these movies are not going to make very much money, and therefore will not be provided with a massive budget.

So the nominees this time around are:

Leonardo DiCaprio, Blood Diamond ($100M)
Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson ($700,000)
Peter O'Toole, Venus (unknown, say $5M)
Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness ($55M)
Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland ($6M)

Based on the last ten years, the winner could be any of these, although Ryan Gosling might struggle with Half Nelson's tiny budget. Will Smith and Forest Whitaker split the long term average between them, so flip a coin. Or better yet, roll a 5-sided dice (if one exists).