2025 Oscar Predictions: BEST ACTOR (August)

Daniel Craig remains a top contender for Queer despite still having no distributor announcement for the Luca Guadagnino film just a week ahead of the Venice Film Festival where it will premiere. Although it’s skipping Telluride, it will also have splashy appearances at TIFF and NYFF, so who is stepping up and why isn’t it Amazon, who released Suspiria, Challengers and his next, just wrapped film, After the Hunt? Maybe that’s going to be a big reveal soon. Maybe it’s just been Amazon All Along.

Is Warner Bros making a sneak play with Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2 after all? About a month ago it was ‘confirmed’ by a trade that the film would not be a 2024 release and shoot for 2025. That could be well and true but then a week ago, the official Twitter account for the Oscar-winning writer/director/actor revealed that a “trailer is anticipated in the next few months, with an expected release date in late January 2025.” Is that hinting at a possible late 2024 qualifying run and then expansion in the new year? Warner Bros already moved Bong Joon-Ho’s Mickey 17 with Robert Pattinson, the long-awaited and highly anticipated follow up to his history-making Best Picture winner Parasite from 2019, to January 31, 2025 and dumping both Academy Award-winning directors in a January graveyard seems bleak at best. Either way, it’s going to make for a busy season for Nicholas Hoult fans as he’ll have Justin Kurzel’s The Order on December 6, Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu on Christmas and now Juror #2 either before or after that.

Academy Awards nominations will be announced January 17, 2025 and the 97th Oscars will be held on March 2.

Here are my 2025 Oscar predictions in Best Actor for August.

1. Ralph Fiennes – Conclave (Focus Features)
2. Colman Domingo – Sing Sing (A24)
3. Timothée Chalamet – A Complete Unknown (Searchlight Pictures)
4. Daniel Craig – Queer (TBA)
5. Paul Mescal – Gladiator II (Paramount Pictures)
6. Jharrel Jerome – Unstoppable (Amazon MGM)
7. Joaquin Phoenix – Joker: Folie à Deux (Warner Bros)
8. Sebastian Stan – A Different Man (A24)
9. Adrien Brody – The Brutalist (TBA)
10. John David Washington – The Piano Lesson (Netflix)

Next up: Ethan Herisse – Nickel Boys (Amazon MGM), Harris Dickinson – Babygirl (A24), Jesse Eisenberg – A Real Pain (Searchlight Pictures), Mike Faist – Challengers (Amazon MGM), Andrew Garfield – We Live in Time (A24), Nicholas Hoult – Juror#2 (Warner Bros), Gabriel LaBelle – Saturday Night (Sony Pictures), Cillian Murphy – Small Things Like These (Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions), Josh O’Connor – Challengers (Amazon MGM), Jesse Plemons – Kinds of Kindness (Searchlight Pictures), Michael Shannon – The End (NEON), Sebastian Stan – The Apprentice (Briarcliff Entertainment)

Other contenders: Austin Butler – The Bikeriders (Focus Features), Adam Driver – Megalopolis (Lionsgate), Jacob Elordi – On Swift Horses (Dimension Films), Richard Gere – Oh, Canada (TBA), Tom Hanks – Here (Sony/TriStar Pictures), André Holland – Exhibiting Forgiveness (Roadside Attractions), Barry Keoghan – Bird (MUBI), Glen Powell – Hit Man (Netflix), Robbie Williams – Better Man (Paramount Pictures)

Lead or Supporting?: Kieran Culkin – A Real Pain (Searchlight Pictures), Mike Faist – Challengers (Amazon MGM), Barry Keoghan – Bird (MUBI), Josh O’Connor – Challengers (Amazon MGM)

2024 or 2025?: Adrien Brody – The Brutalist (TBA), George Clooney – Jay Kelly (Netflix), Ed Harris – Long Day’s Journey Into Night (MGM), André Holland – The Actor (NEON), Nicholas Hoult – Juror#2 (Warner Bros), Oscar Issac – Hand of Dante (TBA), Adam Sandler – Jay Kelly (Netflix), Denzel Washington – High and Low (Apple Original Films)

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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.

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