In my ever-continuing pursuit to give you the best Oscar coverage on the interwebs, I have persuaded several actors nominated for Academy Awards to take the time to tell you why they deserve the Oscar. Here now is Tom Wilkinson, nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his gripping performance as the unraveling, terrified Defense Attorney Arthur Edens in Michael Clayton, sharing his delusions of grandeur with Oscar.

Oscar. Dear Oscar. Of course it’s you, who else could they send, who else could be trusted? I… I know it’s a long way and you’re ready to go the Kodak Theatre… all I’m saying is just wait, just… just wait and please just hear me out because this is not an episode, sequel, remake it’s… I’m begging you Oscar. I’m begging you. Try to make believe this is not just method acting madness because this is not just method acting madness. Two weeks ago I came out of Spago’s OK, I’m running across Wilshire Blvd., there’s a car waiting, I’ve got exactly 38 minutes to get to the studio lot for a screen test and I’m reading the sides off of my Blackberry. There’s this panicked junior agent sprinting along beside me, scribbling in a notepad, and suddenly she starts screaming, and I realize we’re standing in the middle of the street, the light’s changed, there’s this wall of traffic, serious traffic speeding towards us, and I… I freeze, I can’t move, and I’m suddenly consumed with the overwhelming sensation that I’m covered in some sort of film. It’s in my hair, my face… it’s like a glaze… a coating, and… at first I thought, oh my god, I know what this is, this is some sort of botox - restalyne - fluid. I’m drenched in plastic surgery waste, I’ve breached the facelift, I’ve been reborn as a younger actor. But then the traffic, the stampede, the cars, the trucks, the horns, the screaming and I’m thinking no-no-no, reset, this is not film career rebirth, this is some kind of giddy illusion of renewal that happens in the final moment before your agent drops you and you’re begging FOX to give you the second lead in some drama pilot written by a hotshot sitcom whiz kid. And then I realize no-no-no, this is completely wrong because I look back at the building and I had the most stunning moment of clarity. I… I… I realized Oscar, that I had emerged not from the doors of the William Morris Agency, not through the portals of our vast and powerful entertainment industry, but from the asshole of an agency management team who’s sole function is to excrete the… the… the residual rights, the back-end profit points, the DVD sales, the defoliant necessary for other, larger, more powerful moive studios to destroy the miracle of cinema. And that I had been coated in this silver-screen patina of bad movie shit for the best part of my creative life. The stench of it and the sting of it would in all likelihood take the rest of my life to undue, without even going near my starring in a Brett Ratner movie a few years ago. And you know what I did? I took a deep cleansing breath and I put that notion aside. I tabled it. I said to myself as clear as this may be, as potent a feeling as this is, as true a thing as I believe I witnessed today, it must wait. It must stand the test of time, and Oscar, the time is now.

Bangarang!