Best Actress

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

We’re saving our analysis of the Best Picture race for tomorrow, but for today, a quick confession: Of all of the Oscar categories that I run through every year—and so far in 2024 we’ve looked at the supporting actors, the screenplays, the big techies, and some odds and ends—the lead acting fields are always my favorite. Not because they’re competitive (though both races this year are more intriguing than typical), but because they yield the ceremonial creation of my own ballots—a torturous annual exercise, but one I find valuable as a historical matter. It’s easy to exclaim that a specific performance was “snubbed,” or to express bewilderment that a certain actor has never been recognized in their entire career. It’s harder, or at least requires more precision, to point to a rigid five-person field in a given year that you assembled and memorialized at the time. So when I declare that Saoirse Ronan should have received nine Oscar nods already, I’m not (just) randomly raving; I also have the (subjective) data to back it up. Take that, internet!

BEST ACTOR

NOMINEES
Adrien Brody—The Brutalist
Timothée Chalamet—A Complete Unknown
Colman Domingo—Sing Sing
Ralph Fiennes—Conclave
Sebastian Stan—The Apprentice Read More

If you’ll permit me a small confession: These are my two favorite Oscar categories, and also my least favorite. There are just so many good actors these days, the annual task of whittling down the best performances of the year to five names is always a colossal challenge—both tantalizing and torturous. Even more so than the supporting fields, finalizing your selections in the lead categories requires making impossible choices that you’re destined to regret years later. I mean, did I really not include Marion Cotillard on my Best Actress ballot in 2014 for The Immigrant??

The good news is that the Academy makes plenty of its own mistakes, making the pick of a preferred winner from the given slate of nominees much easier. Small mercies, and all that.

BEST ACTOR

NOMINEES
Bradley Cooper—Maestro
Colman Domingo—Rustin
Paul Giamatti—The Holdovers
Cillian Murphy—Oppenheimer
Jeffrey Wright—American Fiction Read More

This is the big one. Sure, we’ll get to Best Picture tomorrow, but my favorite Oscar tradition is analyzing the acting categories—not because I care about who wins, but because I cherish (and agonize over) the process of creating my own ballots. Just remember that whenever you hear the word “snub” in Oscar discourse, it’s almost always misused; there are only five slots in each category, and with so many talented actors working today, it’s extremely difficult to narrow each field to a final quintet.

Such is my labor. Let’s get to work. (And if you missed our takes on the supporting races, you can find those here.)

BEST ACTOR

NOMINEES
Austin Butler—Elvis
Colin Farrell—The Banshees of Inisherin
Brendan Fraser—The Whale
Paul Mescal—Aftersun
Bill Nighy—Living Read More

Let’s keep the suspense going! Even if the supporting actor races are fairly boring at this point, that isn’t true of the screenplays, and there’s also legitimate uncertainty in one of the lead races. The excitement is so contagious, it’s spreading across categories!

BEST ACTOR

NOMINEES
Javier Bardem—Being the Ricardos
Benedict Cumberbatch—The Power of the Dog
Andrew Garfield—Tick Tick Boom
Will Smith—King Richard
Denzel Washington—The Tragedy of Macbeth Read More