2025 Oscar Predictions: BEST ACTOR (October)

What if they put on the 97th Oscars just to trap Josh Hartnett in the Dolby Theatre?

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

1. Adrien Brody – The Brutalist (A24)
2. Ralph Fiennes – Conclave (Focus Features)
3. Timothée Chalamet – A Complete Unknown (Searchlight Pictures)
4. Colman Domingo – Sing Sing (A24)
5. Paul Mescal – Gladiator II (Paramount Pictures)
6. Daniel Craig – Queer (A24)
7. Glen Powell – Hit Man (Netflix)
8. Jesse Eisenberg – A Real Pain (Searchlight Pictures)
9. Sebastian Stan – A Different Man (A24)
10. Josh Hartnett – Trap (Warner Bros)

Next up: Kingsley Ben-Adir – Bob Marley: One Love (Paramount Pictures), Ethan Herisse – Nickel Boys (Amazon MGM), Tom Hanks – Here (Sony Pictures/Columbia Pictures), Jharrel Jerome – Unstoppable (Amazon MGM), Gabriel LaBelle – Saturday Night (Sony Pictures), Cillian Murphy – Small Things Like These (Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions), Joaquin Phoenix – Joker: Folie à Deux (Warner Bros), Sebastian Stan – The Apprentice (Briarcliff Entertainment), John David Washington – The Piano Lesson (Netflix), Robbie Williams – Better Man (Paramount Pictures)

Other contenders: Austin Butler – The Bikeriders (Focus Features), Timothée Chalamet – Dune Part Two (Warner Bros), Adam Driver – Megalopolis (Lionsgate), Andrew Garfield – We Live in Time (A24), Richard Gere – Oh, Canada (Kino Lorber), André Holland – Exhibiting Forgiveness (Roadside Attractions), Anthony Hopkins – One Life (Bleecker Street), Barry Keoghan – Bird (MUBI), Jesse Plemons – Kinds of Kindness (Searchlight Pictures), Jason Schwartzman – Between Two Temples (Sony Pictures Classics), Bill Skarsgård – Nosferatu (Focus Features), Michael Shannon – The End (NEON)

Is he even eligible?: Nicholas Hoult – Juror #2 (Warner Bros)

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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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