2019 Oscar Predictions: BEST ACTOR (April) – Bale’s VP is VIP

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Christian Bale (Untitled Dick Cheney biopic) holds onto the #1 spot, a phrase I feel like I will repeat quite often this year. Despite just having a Best Actor statue go to another actor with a ‘fat’ transformation biopic, Bale is an exception because he actually physically transforms his body rather than adding on a fat suit and makeup. His commitment is there and it won him an Oscar before.

The campaign is starting early for First Man as pieces go up describing the terror of space travel and ‘Whiplash at NASA’ comparisons. That boosts two-time Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling up one to the #2 spot this month, displacing Willem Dafoe playing Vincent Van Gogh in At Eternity’s Gate.

2019 Oscar Predictions: BEST PICTURE (April)

The top five sees two new entries (meaning two other fall). Steve Carell in Beautiful Boy and John David Washington in BlacKkKlansman. Carell has another lead role (in Robert Zemeckis’s The Women of Marwen) and will compete against himself unless critics and groups swing their support to one film. Beautiful Boy should be the gut punch, playing the emotionally exhausted father of a drug-addicted son (played by Oscar-nominee Timothée Chalamet). Although I’ve bumped BlacKkKlansman down a bit in Picture and Director, I feel good about Washington (yes, son of Denzel) to find a lot of breakthrough notices that could push him all the way.

Falling this week are Lucas Hedges (Boy Erased) and Brad Pitt (Ad Astra). Both previous nominees in possibly big awards films this year but at this early stage, movement within the top 10 shouldn’t give too much pause.

2019 Oscar Predictions: BEST DIRECTOR (April)

John C. Reilly debuts with what I’m being told is the best performance of his career in Jacques Audiard’s English-language debut The Sisters Brothers. Reilly also has a ‘fat suit’ performance in the Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy biopic later this year.

Here are my predictions for Best Actor as of April 17, 2018.

1. Christian Bale – Untitled Dick Cheney biopic
2. Ryan Gosling – First Man
3. Willem Dafoe – At Eternity’s Gate
4. Steve Carell – Beautiful Boy
5. John David Washington – BlacKkKlansman
6. Lucas Hedges – Boy Erased
7. Brad Pitt – Ad Astra
8. Hugh Jackman – The Front Runner
9. John C. Reilly – The Sisters Brothers
10. Rami Malek – Bohemian Rhapsody
OTHER CONTENDERS
Javier Bardem – Everybody Knows
Chadwick Boseman – Black Panther
Steve Carell – The Women of Marwen
Timothée Chalamet – Beautiful Boy
John Cho – Search
Bradley Cooper – A Star Is Born
Jesse Eisenberg – The Hummingbird Project
Colin Firth – The Mercy
Ben Foster – Leave No Trace
Garrett Hedlund – Burden
John Huston – The Other Side of the Wind
Oscar Isaac – Operation Finale
Rory Kinnear – Peterloo
Roman Kolinka – Maya
George MacKay – The True History of the Kelly Gang
Viggo Mortensen – Green Book
Jack O’Connell – Trial by Fire
Nick Offerman – Hearts Beat Loud
Robert Pattinson – High Life
Joaquin Phoenix – The Sisters Brothers
Joaquin Phoenix – You Were Never Really Here
Chris Pine – Outlaw King
Jonathan Pryce – The Wife
Robert Redford – Old Man and the Gun
John C. Reilly – Stan and Ollie
Paul Rudd – The Catcher Was a Spy
Toni Servillo – Loro
Alexander Skarsgård – The Hummingbird Project
Christoph Waltz – Georgetown

2019 Oscar Predictions: BEST PICTURE (April)

2019 Oscar Predictions: BEST DIRECTOR (April)

2019 Oscar Predictions: BEST ACTOR (April)

2019 Oscar Predictions: BEST ACTRESS (April)

2019 Oscar Predictions: SUPPORTING ACTOR (April)

2019 Oscar Predictions: SUPPORTING ACTRESS (April)

2019 Oscar Predictions: ADAPTED and ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY (April)

Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013. He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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