Music biopics about major pop stars of the rock and roll era have been huge in the 21st Century. The most recent, Bruce Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, is currently in theaters on the 2025 movie schedule. Jeremy Allen White’s portrayal of the Jersey hero is just the latest in a long line of really great performances of our favorite musicians. Many have been nominated for Oscars, and some have won them for their roles. Perhaps my favorite, though, doesn’t seem to get the same acclaim: Paul Dano as Brian Wilson in Love & Mercy from 2014.
Paul Dano And John Cusack Both Play Wilson In Love & Mercy
I will admit here that I adore The Beach Boys, and I believe that Brian Wilson is one of the musical geniuses of all time, not just in rock and roll. Bias aside, however, both Paul Dano and John Cusack are fantastic as the troubled songwriter at different points in his life. Dano is especially good. So good, in fact, that it boggles my mind that he wasn’t even nominated for an Academy Award. He did get a Golden Globe nod for Best Supporting Actor, but lost to Sylvester Stallone for Creed.
Dano is consistently great in his movies, going all the way back to his early roles in Little Miss Sunshine and one of my favorite movies, There Will Be Blood. I would put his turn as Wilson in the 1960s, as he wrote and recorded his masterpiece, Pet Sounds, right there alongside those other performances. He really nails Wilson’s mannerisms and plays the role with the exact level of delicacy that the late Wilson had in real life. He also looks just like Wilson did. There were times in the movie that I completely forgot it wasn’t the real Wilson.
The Last 25 Years Have Been A Golden Age For Musical Biopics
In the 21st century, Hollywood has gone all in on music biopics. Many of the best music biopics, like Walk The Line about Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, Ray, about Ray Charles, and Bohemian Rhapsody, about Freddie Mercury and Queen, all won Oscars for the actors playing the lead characters. Love & Mercy didn’t get one nomination in any category, including the acting awards. That isn’t to take away from the others, all of which were more than deserving of their accolades. It just shows how overlooked Cusack and Dano were for Love & Mercy.
I expect that Jeremy Allen White will also join the ranks of actors nominated for Best Actor after playing a superstar songwriter, just as Timothée Chalamet was last year for his portrayal of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, at a very different kind of moment in his career than Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere. I’m rooting for White, but it’ll still frustrate me that Dano (and Cusack, for that matter) got snubbed.
