Oscars 2025: Best Actress and Best Actor

Jeremy BeckOscars
Rose Byrne in If I Had Legs I'd Kick You; Ethan Hawke in Blue Moon

We’re saving the nominal top prizes (Best Picture and Best Director) for tomorrow, but frankly, these are always my two favorite Oscar categories to analyze. Not because they’re competitive—though one of this year’s races is downright tantalizing in its plausible outcomes—but because the pool of acting talent in contemporary cinema is incredibly deep, and it’s always rewarding (if challenging) to whittle the list of contenders down to my personal favorites. I routinely argue that the word “snub” has no proper place in movie-award discourse, and the Best Actor and Best Actress races most plainly illustrate why.

BEST ACTRESS

NOMINEES
Jessie Buckley—Hamnet
Rose Byrne—If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Kate Hudson—Song Sung Blue
Renate Reinsve—Sentimental Value
Emma Stone—Bugonia

WILL WIN
Right, so remember what I was saying about one of this year’s lead acting categories being extremely competitive? It’s the other one. Buckley has swept all of the precursor awards, she gets to articulate virulent grief, and she heads a Best Picture nominee. Unless you’re gambling with someone else’s money, there’s no reason to bet on anyone else. Read More

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Oscars 2025: The Screenplays

Jeremy BeckOscars
Vahid Mobasseri in It Was Just an Accident; Joel Edgerton in Train Dreams

Moving right along. If you previously missed our analysis of the supporting actor races, the big techies, or the odds and ends, click the links I just fastidiously embedded.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

NOMINEES
Blue Moon—Robert Kaplow
It Was Just an Accident—Jafar Panahi et al.
Marty Supreme—Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie
Sentimental Value—Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier
Sinners—Ryan Coogler

WILL WIN
Sinners. It may have 16 nominations, but in most cases it’s facing off against One Battle After Another. (The four below-the-line fields where that isn’t the case—costume design, makeup and hairstyling, original song, and visual effects—all have their own favorites.) That will cause voters consternation in most cases. Not so here. Read More

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Oscars 2025: Best Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress

Jeremy BeckOscars
Stellan Skarsgård in Sentimental Value; Amy Madigan in Weapons

Welcome to the Oscar categories you might actually be interested in! So far this week, we’ve analyzed some miscellaneous categories and some more robust technical fields. Now, we get to the good stuff—the supporting actor/actress races. Bonus points for both battles being somewhat competitive this year!

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

NOMINEES
Benicio del Toro—One Battle After Another
Jacob Elordi—Frankenstein
Delroy Lindo—Sinners
Sean Penn—One Battle After Another
Stellan Skarsgård—Sentimental Value

WILL WIN
For most of the year this felt like del Toro’s race to lose, but then the actual awards started happening and his name never got called. Instead, the big winner thus far has been Penn, who claimed victory at both the Actor Awards (aka SAG) and the BAFTAs. His likeliest competition is Skarsgård, who won the Golden Globe; he’s a well-liked performer who’s never received an Oscar, whereas Penn already has two. But I used that logic the last time Penn was the favorite (in 2008 for Milk, when he defeated Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler), so I’m not getting burned by it again. The Academy just really likes giving trophies to Sean Penn, and I don’t see them stopping now. Penn takes it. Read More

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Oscars 2025: The Big Techies

Jeremy BeckOscars
Jacob Elordi in Frankenstein

Yesterday, we analyzed eight different miscellaneous categories for the upcoming Oscars. Today, we’re keeping things below the line, but these five fields aren’t miscellany; they’re big-time. Let’s get to it.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

NOMINEES
Frankenstein—Dan Laustsen
Marty Supreme—Darius Khondji
One Battle After Another—Michael Bauman
Sinners—Autumn Durald Arkapaw
Train Dreams—Adolpho Veloso

WILL WIN
This is one of many categories that presents as a faceoff between the year’s two heavy hitters, One Battle After Another and Sinners—though I wouldn’t rule out a Train Dreams upset, given that film’s enveloping landscapes. Still, One Battle After Another is the safe pick here; it’s quite expansive itself, and that closing car chase is a virtuoso piece of camerawork. Read More

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Oscars 2025: The Odds and Ends

Jeremy BeckOscars
A scene from KPop Demon Hunters

Behold, it’s the Oscars! And an unusually competitive Oscars at that! Over the next week, we’ll be analyzing the 21 feature categories (no offense, shorts), discussing our predictions and preferences. Am I deeply invested in who will or should win any particular Academy Award? Not really. But the Oscars still matter, in both a commercial and historical sense, and it remains meaningful to think about them, even if just as an excuse to complain about them.

Today we’ll be running through eight miscellaneous categories—the kind that can make or break your pool (are Oscar pools still a thing?). Let’s get to it.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

NOMINEES
Arco
Elio
KPop Demon Hunters
Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
Zootopia 2

WILL WIN
Did you know that Zootopia 2 was the biggest domestic hit of 2025? It somehow made more money than Minecraft, Avatar: Fire and Ash, and Superman. But the Oscars are less about financial success than cultural saturation, and no animated film was a bigger phenomenon last year than KPop Demon Hunters—a movie whose presence was so pervasive, Netflix even allowed it to appear in theaters for a few days. That’s a real breakthrough. Read More

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