2023 Oscar Predictions: MAKEUP and HAIRSTYLING (October)

On December 21, the Academy will reveal the shortlist of 10 contenders who will be eligible to compete for a nomination for Makeup and Hairstyling. Last year, The Eyes of Tammy Faye took this home with its star Jessica Chastain winning Best Actress. This category, especially when involving significant prosthetics and transformations, has had a very healthy relationship with Oscars’ lead acting categories, which also includes Dallas Buyers Club (Matthew McConaughey), Darkest Hour (Gary Oldman), and The Iron Lady (Meryl Streep). This year has a clear leader in The Whale, with Brendan Fraser as the Best Actor frontrunner.

But The Whale isn’t the only prosthetics-heavy contender, we’ll also have The Batman with Colin Farrell’s Penguin, Elvis with layers of makeup and fat suit on Tom Hanks and possibly the transformational work in Blonde with Ana de Armas in turning her into Marilyn Monroe.

Here are my 2023 Oscar predictions in Makeup and Hairstyling for October.

1. The Whale (A24)
2. The Batman (Warner Bros)
3. Elvis (Warner Bros)
4. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Marvel Studios)
5. All Quiet on the Western Front (Netflix)

6. Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24)
7. Blonde (Netflix)
8. Babylon (Paramount Pictures)
9. Three Thousand Years of Longing (MGM)
10. Till (UAR/Orion Pictures)

Other contenders (alphabetical)

Bones & All (UAR)
Crimes of the Future (NEON)
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Marvel Studios)
The Fabelmans (Universal Pictures)
I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Columbia Pictures)
Men (A24)
The Northman (Focus Features)
RRR (Variance Films)
Thor: Love and Thunder (Marvel Studios)
The Woman King (Tri-Star)

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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), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) 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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