I just recently came upon a revelation. It suddenly dawned on me why Adrien Brody won the Best Actor Oscar at the Academy Awards. This is not to say his performance was not of good quality, but there is another reason why he was chosen despite the stiff competiton of his fellow nominees. Of all five nominees, he was the one who had never won an Oscar before. Jack Nicholson won three, Michael Caine won two, Daniel Day-Lewis won one, and Nicholas Cage won one. The Academy probably thought that it was his time to win an award. Overall, the awards were distributed evenly across many movies, avoiding a Chicago sweep.