ANNUAL RANT ENGAGED!
If Butler wins it'll be the 12th time in the last 20 years Best Actor is given to someone playing a real person. I'm willing to throw out the McConaghey win because very few people knew the guy he played, but for the other 10 you have -- Ray Charles, Truman Capote, Idi Amin, Harvey Milk, King George VI, Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Hawking, Winston Churchill, Freddie Mercury and Richard Williams.
At least with Lincoln we don't have audio/video, so I feel like there is some genuine creation in that case, but in the other nine we have copious audio and visual records of these people. Impersonation is fine, but I'm not nearly as impressed with that as I am when folks have to develop characters from scratch.
Alright. Got that out of my system.