The closes to a breakthrough with motion capture, and/or animation being added to an actor’s performance would be Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Most of the acting Pitt did was as the half-animated Button – barely recognizable and a performance that simply couldn’t have been gotten without aided technology. That shows that the membrane has been pierced, even if Pitt was also seen a good amount of the time as himself, and himself with makeup.
Good point. From Sasha Stone at Awards Daily. For more on this, listen to the most recent edition of Oscar Talk.