Rocky is eligible for the Oscars. Amaze, amaze, amaze.
James Ortiz, a stage performer and master puppeteer, has been central to one of the year’s most talked-about screen creations: Rocky, the spider-like alien at the heart of Amazon MGM Studios’ space-traveling blockbuster “Project Hail Mary.” Brought to life through intricate puppetry and vocal performance opposite Ryan Gosling, the character has become one of the film’s most celebrated elements, and the studio is already mapping out how to position the work in the fall awards race. Ortiz will be submitted for supporting actor.
Awards enthusiasts should expect the film to compete across major categories, including best picture and directing for Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, alongside a robust artisans campaign. But Ortiz’s performance raises a more complicated question: Can a nontraditional acting role compete with human performances?
Variety has learned exclusively that Ortiz’s work is eligible for Academy Award consideration in acting categories, based on current rules. In addition, his work is eligible for the Actor Awards, where puppeteers fall under SAG-AFTRA jurisdiction, which the organization confirmed to his representatives. However, under the Golden Globes’ existing rules, his work will not be eligible. The Critics Choice Awards have no explicit guidelines that would exclude him, suggesting he will be eligible for consideration. At the BAFTAs he would also be eligible given they are the only voting body to ever nominate a voice-acting performance: Eddie Murphy in “Shrek” (2001) for best supporting actor.
That ambiguity underscores a longstanding industry debate over how to classify achievements that blur the line between acting, voice work and technical artistry. It also points directly to a mechanism the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences built for exactly this purpose — and one it has largely abandoned for more than three decades.
The Special Achievement Award, introduced in 1972, was arguably the Academy’s most flexible instrument. It was designed to recognize groundbreaking work that did not fit neatly into existing categories, arriving at a moment when rapid technological and creative innovation was outpacing the Oscars’ rulebook. For more than two decades, it has allowed the Academy to honor achievements that might otherwise go unrecognized.
The award was most often used to spotlight advancements in sound and visual effects, with 18 films recognized for advancing those crafts. It began with artists L.B. Abbott and A.D. Flowers for the visual effects of the disaster epic “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972), establishing a pattern of honoring artisans whose work redefined what was possible on screen. Among the most enduring examples is sound designer Ben Burtt, who received a Special Achievement Award for creating the alien, creature and voice of R2-D2 in “Star Wars” — a contribution that functions as a performance in every meaningful sense and remains inseparable from the film’s cultural legacy.
There were also moments when the Academy deployed the award more creatively, extending its reach beyond a single craft category. Richard Williams became the first recipient outside the traditional sound and visual effects lanes for his contributions to “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1988). As animation director, he supervised the film’s groundbreaking integration of hand-drawn characters into live action. He also helped design iconic figures including Jessica Rabbit. Though he shared the film’s competitive Oscar for visual effects, the Special Achievement Award allowed the Academy to single out the distinct artistic authorship behind the animation.
The last recipient was “Toy Story” (1995), honored as the first fully computer-animated feature, five years before the Academy formalized that progress by creating the best animated feature category.
Looking back at what was absorbed into existing categories rather than singled out, the distinctions become even sharper. H.R. Giger’s design of the xenomorph in Ridley Scott’s “Alien” was recognized as part of the film’s Oscar-winning visual effects team, even though the creature operates as a fully realized character, not merely an effect. That same distinction sits at the heart of what Ortiz has created with Rocky — a presence that is tactile, expressive and alive. The history of the Special Achievement Award makes clear that, at its best, the Academy has found ways to honor this kind of work when its existing categories fall short.
In recent years, the Academy has largely stepped away from the award. But this could be the right year to revive it.
Amazon MGM Studios
“Typically, we talk about puppetry as a technical achievement, and it is,” Ortiz tells Variety. “It’s a spectacle. For me as a performer, however, that’s never my entry point. I’m interested in the heart of the character — what they’re trying to communicate, what they’re feeling underneath all of it. When we can take a medium like puppetry, which is often seen as decorative, and bring to life a character with a beating heart in a way that genuinely affects people, then we’re doing something truly meaningful.”
Ortiz speaks about his process like an actor — because he is one.
Whether he is eligible and whether the Oscars will actually nominate him are two fundamentally different questions, and they lead to three the Academy should tackle:
Will the Academy, which has never formally recognized a voice, motion-capture or hybrid performance in an acting category, ever feel compelled to do so? If not, does a performance like Ortiz’s warrant a Special Achievement Award? And if the acting branch is never going to embrace these artists as actors, does the industry need an entirely new category — a formal home for voice performances, motion-capture and puppetry work that has been without one for 50 years?
Gosling and Ortiz rehearsed each scene before bringing out the puppet, nailing down the blocking between them first. Despite Rocky’s unconventional appearance — no face, no conventional means of expression — he is the film’s breakout creation. Ortiz, alongside designer Neil Scanlan, solved the central challenge of making a creature feel irresistible. That achievement warrants serious consideration for a Special Achievement Award, if not a place on the ballot outright.
Early versions of this conversation surfaced around Andy Serkis’ work as Gollum in “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” and as Caesar in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” The Critics Choice Awards nominated Serkis for best supporting actor for the latter. They gave him a special prize for best digital acting performance for the former. He resurfaced in the same conversation when he brought “King Kong” to life in 2005. The Oscars passed on all of it.
The debate continued with James Cameron’s “Avatar” in 2009, with standout performances from cast members including Zoe Saldaña. The industry’s resistance was stated plainly at a 2010 Newsweek Oscars roundtable, where Morgan Freeman said of motion-capture performance: “I think it’s a bit faddish, because it’s really cartoons.”
Some of Hollywood’s old guard almost certainly still feels that way. That sentiment, however understandable, has cost the industry decades of recognition it cannot get back. The voice acting debate has its own long history. Robin Williams’ work as Genie in “Aladdin” (1992) prompted the Golden Globes to present a one-time Special Achievement Award to the performer. The conversation resurfaced with Ellen DeGeneres as Dory in “Finding Nemo” (2003). It reached a fever pitch with Scarlett Johansson’s turn as the AI Samantha in Spike Jonze’s “Her” (2013), for which she was also nommed for a Critics Choice Award.
Some of cinema’s most compelling historical precedents deepen the question. Where would Frank Oz’s Yoda from “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) be classified in today’s awards climate? Jim Henson created an entire performance genre that still thrives — so where would the ensemble from “The Muppets” (2011) fall? Steve Whitmire inhabited Kermit the Frog, Beaker, Statler, Rizzo the Rat, Link Hogthrob, Lips and the Newsman across a single film. If that is not acting, the word needs a better definition.
The Academy has shown flashes of institutional curiosity. In 2017, after winning back-to-back Oscars for “Birdman” and “The Revenant,” Alejandro G. Iñárritu received a Special Award, distinct from the Special Achievement Oscar, for his large-scale, immersive virtual reality installation “Carne y Arena (Virtually Present, Physically Invisible),” signaling an openness to new storytelling forms. That gesture, however, has not become policy.
This is precisely where the Academy needs to innovate again, and the Special Achievement Award is the instrument it already possesses. Rocky is not a visual effect or a disembodied voice. The character’s physicality, precision and comedic timing are rooted in Ortiz’s performance, mediated through puppetry and design in the same way a motion-capture performance is mediated through technology. As Hollywood continues to grapple with the perceived existential threat of artificial intelligence, the industry has yet to formally answer the more foundational question sitting directly in front of it: If Ortiz is not acting, then what exactly is he doing?
The Special Achievement Award exists. The Academy knows how to use it. Fist Rocky’s bump.
