2019 Oscar Predictions: BEST ACTOR (May) – Bradley Cooper’s ‘Star’ Rises

Erik Anderson May 23, 2018

Some movement this month in Best Actor – with the exception of the #1 and #2 spots as Oscar winner and three-time nominee Christian Bale (Backseat) and two-time Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling (First Man) still hold onto those.

But a lot of shakeup elsewhere. Oscar nominee Steve Carell moves up to #3 with Beautiful Boy. The first look at the October release from Amazon with Oscar nominee Timothée Chalamet hit last week, with a full trailer on the way soon. With BlacKkKlansman‘s huge Cannes success, star John David Washington moves up in the rankings as well and Oscar nominee Lucas Hedges (Boy Erased) finds himself back in the top 5. Both Washington and Hedges are from Focus Features and have earlier than usual release dates (August and September, respectively) but I think they can both find a way in – Focus did a superb job doing just that this last Oscar season with Gary Oldman and Daniel Day-Lewis.

The big move is Bradley Cooper in A Star Is Born. He debuts this month at #6 on the strength of the great word of mouth his directorial debut is getting. He’s already a four-time Oscar nominee and clearly well-liked within the Academy. He’s also a producer and writer on A Star Is Born so we could be looking at a George Clooney-esque run with this film.

With Sony Pictures Classics picking up Jason Reitman’s Gary Hart sex scandal drama The Front Runner, Hugh Jackman could be adding a second Best Actor nomination to his list. All of this movement bumped two-time Oscar nominee Willem Dafoe (At Eternity’s Gate) down quite a bit. Although his Julian Schnabel-directed biopic of Vincent Van Gogh got picked up during Cannes, it was by CBS Films which might struggle with this. They previously had Hell or High Water, which got them Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor nominations but that film was also a late summer sleeper hit. They’ll have to work hard for Dafoe here as the Best Actor field gets deeper and deeper.

With the first trailer for Bohemian Rhapsody dropping last week, Rami Malek hangs on to the #10 spot.

Here are my predictions for Best Actor as of May 23, 2018.

1. Christian Bale – Backseat

2. Ryan Gosling – First Man

3. Steve Carell – Beautiful Boy

4. John David Washington – BlacKkKlansman

5. Lucas Hedges – Boy Erased

6. Bradley Cooper – A Star Is Born

7. Hugh Jackman – The Front Runner

8. Willem Dafoe – At Eternity’s Gate

9. Brad Pitt – Ad Astra

10. Rami Malek – Bohemian Rhapsody

NEXT UP

Steve Carell – The Women of Marwen

Rory Kinnear – Peterloo

Viggo Mortensen – Green Book

Robert Redford – Old Man and the Gun

John C. Reilly – The Sisters Brothers

OTHER CONTENDERS

Javier Bardem – Everybody Knows

Chadwick Boseman – Black Panther

Timothée Chalamet – Beautiful Boy

John Cho – Search

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

Roman Kolinka – Maya

George MacKay – The True History of the Kelly Gang

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

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 (May)

2019 Oscar Predictions: BEST DIRECTOR (May)

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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.