Actor: Chris Cooper

Chris Cooper won Best Supporting Actor for Adaptation, playing an orchid thief with missing front teeth and a genuine philosophical position, in a performance he built partly on his own rural background.

American Beauty gave him a repressed marine, and October Sky a mining father, both of which use the same instrument: a man who cannot say what he means.

Lone Star, for John Sayles, is the best lead performance and the least seen.

He is married to Marianne Leone and the two have written about their son Jesse, who had cerebral palsy and died at seventeen.