Oscars 2022: Why ‘The Power of the Dog’ Star Jesse Plemons Looks So Familiar

The 2022 Academy Awards season has been a wild one. In addition to many contenders pundits have been calling for months, several surprise nominations managed to sneak through. Of this year’s Oscar nominees, Jesse Plemons’ nod for Best Supporting Actor in The Power of the Dog is perhaps the most surprising. The actor has been turning in memorable performances for years with less recognition than he’s deserved. Here’s where fans have seen him.

Where fans have seen Jesse Plemons before

Plemons has actually been acting for more than 20 years. The actor’s first few films include Varsity Blues, All the Pretty Horses — as a young version of Matt Damon’s character — and Like Mike. Throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, he landed several more high-profile films. These include Seth Rogen comedy Observe and Report, Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, and Battleship. But Plemons’ career really took off in the mid-2010s.

From 2015 to 2020, he appeared in more than a dozen movies. These include key roles in Black Mass, Bridge of Spies, The Post, Vice, The Irishman, and I’m Thinking of Ending Things. Plemons also earned rave reviews for a hilarious supporting turn in 2018’s Game Night. And in 2021, he appeared in four movies, including Disney’s Jungle Cruise and a role opposite his real-life fiancée Kirsten Dunst in The Power of the Dog.

Will the actor win an Academy Award in 2022?

While director Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog has been one of the most-talked-about films of this Oscar season, few expected Plemons to secure a nomination. After all, his role as George Burbank — brother to Benedict Cumberbatch’s Phil Burbank — is the quietest of the main four roles. And he had to compete with co-star Kodi Smit-McPhee, who was also submitted for consideration in the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Remarkably, both Smit-McPhee and Plemons received nominations in that category. But realistically, Plemons isn’t likely to win the award. Even Smit-McPhee — the frontrunner for most of awards season — is predicted by most pundits to lose to another first-time nominee, Troy Kotsur for CODA, at the 94th Academy Awards. Still, after years of underrated work on the big screen, Plemons finally broke into the awards conversation.

What is Jesse Plemons doing after the 2022 Oscars?

By the looks of it, Plemons could find himself back at the Oscars very soon. The actor’s next project is Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. In that film, he’ll play a major role opposite Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. The hotly anticipated film is scheduled to release in November 2022 on Apple TV+.

In addition, many fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) are wondering whether Plemons might make his way into that superhero franchise. After all, the actor’s three co-stars in The Power of the Dog have all played Marvel characters at one point. So it wouldn’t surprise fans to see Plemons make his way into the MCU soon.