Academy Awards need new category

The Motion Picture Academy has been tinkering and refining its rules and categories since its inception. In recent years, we've seen the addition of a best animated film category, and this year 10 films are vying for best picture -- although five had been the standard number for nominees since the mid-1940s.

So while it's in a tinkering spirit, here's a proposal for two new awards: most promising new actor and most promising new actress.

The academy has never had a category of that kind, although in the old days, its Board of Governors would routinely vote to give a special award to a child or "juvenile" performer. That's how the academy acknowledged Shirley Temple, Judy Garland, Margaret O'Brien and other young stars. But these awards were strictly for minors, and the winners didn't really get an Oscar. They got a miniature Oscar, which looked and seemed condescending. In the case of Judy Garland, she got her baby Oscar less than four months before she turned 18.

I'm not proposing a formalized kids award for the best newcomer category, but rather something like the French have at their Cesar Awards, their equivalent of the Oscars. Since 1983, the Cesars' best newcomer awards have given a boost to burgeoning talents. Under the Cesar rules, it's possible to be nominated more than once for Best Newcomer, but you can win only one time. After that, you're no longer a newcomer.

The Cesars have had incredible luck with this category, particularly with regard to actresses. The list of winners looks like a history of contemporary French cinema, written before it happened -- including Charlotte Gainsbourg, Sophie Marceau and Audrey Tautou.

If adopted by the Oscars, such a category could serve a number of functions. First, it could be used to honor outstanding child performers, when appropriate. Anna Pacquin could have won this instead of best supporting actress for "The Piano," and Haley Joel Osment could have gone home with a best newcomer Oscar instead of empty-handed for his astonishing work in "The Sixth Sense."

Mainly it could be used to acknowledge or hail the arrival of young adult stars. Julia Roberts might have won her first Oscar for "Pretty Woman," obviating the need to confer the prize on her for "Erin Brockovich." This year, Carey Mulligan would make a very deserving best newcomer winner for her performance in "An Education," if only such an award existed. Instead one of two things will happen. Either she will go home with nothing, which would be sad. Or she'll win best actress, which would be sadder.

The most promising category could also be a nice way of easing voters into the idea of young star's talent. Chris O'Donnell would certainly have won in the 1990s. Brad Pitt would have, too, thus eliminating that sense of obligation to keep nominating him for likable, so-so performances. Scarlett Johansson and Winona Ryder would undoubtedly be Oscar winners already. And instead of an empty space on John Travolta's mantelpiece for the past 30 years, he could have had an Oscar up there --collecting dust since "Saturday Night Fever."