Wes Studi is getting an honorary Oscar, and I’m all for it. Slated for a Governors Award, Studi is being honored, along with David Lynch, Geena Davis and Lina Wertmuller by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.
Wes Studi has an uncommon gift of being compelling. I first noticed him in Dances with Wolves, but he’s compiled 97 screen credits from Geronimo: An American Legend to The New World to Heat to Avatar.
Undoubtedly, Studi’s greatest (and most searing) performance was as Magua in The Last of the Mohicans, a movie that he absolutely stole from the likes of Daniel Day-Lewis, Madeleine Stowe and Russell Means.
Studi, of Cherokee descent, is the first Native American actor to receive an Oscar.
